Vivek Agnihotri

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 released his documentary, The Kashmir Files: Unreported in 2024 and The Bengal Files in 2025.

• Name — Vivek Agnihotri • Occupation — * Film director • film producer • screenwriter • author • Born — 10 November 1973 • Birthplace — Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India • Children — 2 • Education — Indian Institute of Mass Communication • Notable Works — * The Kashmir Files • The Tashkent Files • Awards — National Film Awards (2023, 2021) • Honours — Honorary Doctorate (DY Patil University, 2024) • Website — https: vivekagnihotri.com

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 did his schooling from Kendriya Vidyalaya, Gwalior. Later, 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. He has also procured degrees from Bhopal School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University and DY Patil University.

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.

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

In 2018, Agnihotri wrote the book 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. The Union Minister of Human Resource Development Smriti Irani endorsed Agnihotri's views of Jadavpur University and Jawaharlal Nehru University for having refused to screen Buddha in a Traffic Jam.

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".

Fact checkers have noted Agnihotri to have shared misleading content from his Twitter account. In September 2018, Agnihotri tweeted a listicle claiming that a survey from the BBC found that the Indian National Congress was the second most corrupt party in the world. The survey was fake and an online editor writing for the BBC said that they have never conducted such surveys. In November 2018, Agnihotri tweeted a misleading video that appeared to show that Indian political activist Kanhaiya Kumar had converted to Islam. According to Boom Fact Check, the video was "a compilation of three separate clips which have taken Kanhaiya's statements out of context from the entire speech." In March 2019, Agnihotri falsely claimed that former Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was responsible for the outcome of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. Nehru had previously died in May 1964 and Lal Bahadur Shastri was Prime Minister during the war. In January 2020, Agnihotri tweeted a doctored image of an anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protester that he claimed was real. In February 2020, Agnihotri falsely claimed that cannabis kills COVID-19. 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. Agnihotri and his team, including his wife, 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 The Kashmir Files (2022) 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 social media post from 2013 of his consisting of an offensive rape joke, went viral after he joined a rally for solidarity on justice for the victim, during protests against Banerjee's government. He was accused by bollywood actress Tanushree Dutta for sexual hassment on the sets of Chocolate (2005). In 2018, 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. Sattyajit Gazmer, the film's assistant director, also disputed Tanushree's allegations. In September 2025, Agnihotri faced criticism for posting a screening of the Bengal Files featuring children, despite the film being rated A.

Key • Denotes films that are not yet been released • Year — Title — Producer — Director — Screenwriter — Notes • 2005 — Chocolate — Uncredited remake of The Usual Suspects (1995) • 2007 — Goal • 2012 — Hate Story • 2014 — Zid • 2016 — Buddha in a Traffic Jam • Junooniyat • 2019 — The Tashkent Files • 2022 — The Kashmir Files — Nominated – Filmfare Award for Best Film Nominated – Filmfare Award for Best Director Nominated – Filmfare Award for Best Screenplay • 2023 — The Kashmir Files: Unreported — Documentary • The Vaccine War • 2025 — The Bengal Files

In 2022, Agnihotri received the National Kishore Kumar Samman.

• Illustration — Agnihotri at the 67th National Film Awards ceremony in New Delhi on 25 October 2021 • Year — Award — Category — Work — Result — Ref • 2023 — National Film Awards — Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration — The Kashmir Files • 2023 — Zee Cine Awards — Best Screenplay — The Kashmir Files • 2023 — Filmfare Awards — Best Director and Best Screenplay — The Kashmir Files • 2022 — National Kishore Kumar Award (MP Govt) — Outstanding Contribution — — • 2022 — Indian Television Awards — Golden Film of Indian Cinema — The Kashmir Files • 2022 — International Indian Film Festival of Toronto (LIIFT) / IFFI — Best Feature Film on Human Rights — The Kashmir Files • 2021 — National Film Awards — Best Screenplay (Dialogues) — The Tashkent Files • 2014 — Jakarta International Film Festival — Best Writer and Director — Buddha in a Traffic Jam

In 2024, Agnihotri was conferred an honorary doctorate by D.Y. Patil University for his contribution to cinema and the arts.