Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri is an Indian film director, screenwriter, and author. As of 2019, he is a member of the board of India's Central Board of Film Certification. Agnihotri started his career with advertorial agencies and moved to producing and directing tele-serials. He debuted in Bollywood with the crime thriller Chocolate and went on to direct multiple films. In 2017, his first short film Mohammad and Urvashi won the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for best actor.
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.
Filmography
Feature films
Vivek debuted in Bollywood with Chocolate, which is 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. 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 and was a flop.
Film name
Producer
Director
Screen writer
Release
Chocolate
2005
Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal
2007
Hate Story
2012
Buddha in a Traffic Jam
2016
The Tashkent Files
2019
Hate Story received mixed critical reception and fared moderately at the box office. Buddha in a Traffic Jam featured his wife Pallavi and premiered at Mumbai International Film Festival in 2014; it was received unfavorably by critics and severely under-performed at the box office. Junooniyat was also subject to poor reviews and fared similarly. Zid received poor reviews but did average business at the box office. However, Agnihotri has since claimed that credit for direction and screen-play was wrongly attributed to him, and that he was not involved with the film. The Tashkent Files received mostly mixed reviews from critics but became a sleeper box-office hit.Agnihotri was honoured by the Indian Film & Television Directors’ Association for the box-office success of the movie. As of, Agnihotri is working on The Kashmir Files, a film chronicling the "unreported history of Kashmiri Hindus" which is scheduled to be released on 15 August 2020.
Short films
Agnihotri's short film Mohammad and Urvashi won a Dadasaheb Phalke Award for best actor in 2017. His film was released the following year and he said he received threats for using the name Mohammad.
In 2018, Vivek wrote, 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. Reviews in the Organiser and The New Indian Express had praised the work. The Union Minister of Human Resource DevelopmentSmriti Irani endorsed Vivek's views of Jadavpur University and Jawaharlal Nehru University for having refused to screen Buddha in a Traffic Jam.
Personal life
Vivek is married to the Indian actor Pallavi Joshi and has two children.
Bollywood actor Tanushree Dutta had accused Vivek of inappropriate behaviour during the filming of Chocolate. 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. Vivek had refuted the allegations as "false and frivolous", and filed a defamation case against Dutta. Sattyajit Gazmer, the film's assistant director, has also refuted Tanushree's allegations.
Fact checkers have noted Agnihotri to have shared misleading content from his Twitter account. In September 2018, Twitter had locked his account until he agreed to delete a tweet abusing 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. In January 2018, Agnihotri was accused of engaging in "casteist commentary" on Twitter after he said the flying of a Dalit leader's grandson in business class, when Agnihotri was flying in economy class despite being a Brahmin, was reverse discrimination.
Online masterclass and philanthropy
Amidst 2020 coronavirus lockdown in India, Agnihotri conducted online masterclasses to teach new skills regarding film-making without taking any fee. Previously, he also declared that he will sell his paintings to raise money for daily wage workers.
