Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri (born 10 November 1973) is an Indian director, producer, and writer who works in Hindi cinema. He is a member of the board of India's Central Board of Film Certification and a cultural representative of Indian Cinema at the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. Agnihotri made his directorial debut with the crime thriller Chocolate (2005) and has directed multiple films since which failed to propel his career forward until The Tashkent Files (2019) which emerged as a commercial success and earned him the National Film Award for Best Screenplay - Dialogues. He also wrote and directed The Kashmir Files (2022) which emerged as one of the highest-grossing Indian film of 2022 and earned him the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration. He next wrote and directed a medical drama film The Vaccine War (2023) which emerged as a box-office bomb. He is slated to release his documentary, The Kashmir Files: Unreported in 2024.

Early life and education

Agnihotri was born at Jawahar Colony in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh to Prabhu Dayal Agnihotri and Sharda Agnihotri. His father was a professor at Victoria College, Gwalior. He studied at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication before enrolling at Harvard Extension School for a Certificate of Special Studies in Administration and Management. In interviews with media, he has also mentioned Bhopal School of Social Sciences and Jawaharlal Nehru University among his almae matres.

Career

Advertising and television serials

Agnihotri started his career with the advertising agencies Ogilvy and McCann, and served as creative director for campaigns of Gillette and Coca-Cola. In 1994, he became involved with the directing and production of several television serials; his work was positively received. In 2018, Agnihotri claimed that he had received threats for using the name Mohammad in his short film Mohammad and Urvashi.

Filmmaking

Agnihotri debuted in Bollywood with Chocolate (2005), a remake of the 1995 Hollywood neo-noir crime thriller The Usual Suspects. Critical reception of the movie was negative, and the film fared poorly at box office. In 2018, Bollywood actress Tanushree Dutta would accuse Agnihotri of inappropriate behaviour during its filming. He allegedly asked her to strip and dance to give expression cues to her male co-star Irrfan Khan during a close-up shot and retreated only after Irrfan and Suniel Shetty rebuffed him. Agnihotri denied the allegations as "false and frivolous", and filed a defamation case against Dutta.<ref name="Dutta">Sources covering the episode: Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal is about an all-Asian football team in the United Kingdom that wins trophies while fighting on-field discrimination and the local municipality that wants to sell the team's ground. It received poor reception from critics<ref name="DDDG">Reviews of Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal: Agnihotri's 2014 erotic thriller Zid received poor reviews<ref name="[Zid](https://bliptext.com/articles/zid-2014-film)">Reviews of Zid: Agnihotri's upcoming film, The Delhi Files, will be the last in the Files trilogy, which is "evidently about the 1984 anti-Sikh riots."

Film certification

In 2017, Agnihotri was selected as convenor by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in the preview committee of 48th International Film Festival of India. The same year, he was selected as member on board of India's Central Board of Film Certification.

ICCR

On 15 September 2020, Agnihotri was appointed as cultural representative at Indian Council for Cultural Relations. He would represent Indian Cinema at ICCR.

Urban Naxals

In 2018, Agnihotri wrote Urban Naxals: The Making of Buddha in a Traffic Jam, in which he described individuals in academia and media who were allegedly colluding with Naxalites in a bid to overthrow the Indian government and were thus "invisible enemies of India" as "Urban Naxals". Critics said the term is "vague rhetoric" that is designed to discredit intellectuals who are critical of the establishment and political right and to stifle dissent.<ref name=UNaxals>Coverage and commentary on the term in mainstream media:

National Kishore Kumar Award

In 2022, Agnihotri has received the National Kishore Kumar Samman.

Personal life

Agnihotri married Indian actress Pallavi Joshi in 1997 and has two children. He has described himself as a supporter of Narendra Modi, but not of the Bharatiya Janata Party that Modi belongs to. Agnihotri supports cannabis legalization. In 2022, Agnihotri announced that he was starting knee surgery after suffering a cartilage tear the previous year, which resulted in him suffering a stress fracture. He had ignored the cartilage tear for one and half years while producing The Kashmir Files. In 2022, Agnihotri delivered a speech in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The theme of the event was "India, world peace and humanism".

Controversies

Fact checkers have noted Agnihotri to have shared misleading content from his Twitter account. Sources which say Agnihotri shared misleading content In September 2018, Twitter locked his account until he agreed to delete a tweet denigrating Swara Bhaskar. In response to Swara calling out politician P. C. George, who called an alleged rape victim a prostitute, Vivek tweeted "Where is the placard - '#MeTooProstituteNun'?". The tweet was interpreted as calling Swara a prostitute. Agnihotri defended his tweet and said he was making a point about the placarding by liberals at selective instances of alleged perpetrators belonging to the Hindu community.<ref name="Swara">Sources covering the episode: Vivek Agnihotri and his team, including Pallavi Joshi and Abhishek Agarwal, had issued a legal notice to Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of West Bengal. The notice had demanded the retraction of her comments that had labeled their film 'The Kashmir Files' as false propaganda aimed at humiliating a particular group. Alleging defamation and malicious intent, the notice had required an unconditional apology. The team had asserted that Banerjee's remarks were baseless and intended to tarnish their film and reputation. in August 2024 Agnihotri faced controversy when an old 2013 social media post of his offensive rape joke went viral after he joined a rally for solidarity on justice for victim during protests against Mamta's government. He was accused by Tanushree Dutta for sexual hassment on set of Chocolate (2005).

Filmography

Accolades