Vivek Agnihotri
Born/Date of Birthday: December 21, 1973
Place of Birth: Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India
Nationality: Indian
Education: Indian Institute of Mass Communication
Occupation: Film director, screenwriter, author
Height: 5' 7¼" (1.71 m)
Spouse: Pallavi Joshi (m. 1997)
Children: 2
Parents: Dr Prabhu Dayal Agnihotri, Sharda Agnihotri
Siblings: Prachi Shah
Official Website: vivekagnihotri.com

Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri is an Indian film director, screenwriter, author and activist. As of 2019, 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. He won the National Film Award for Best Screenplay - Dialogues for The Tashkent Files (2019). Agnihotri started his career with advertorial agencies and moved to producing and directing tele-serials. He debuted in Bollywood with the crime thriller Chocolate (2005) and has directed multiple films since.

Early life and education
Agnihotri studied at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication before enrolling at Harvard Extension School for a Certificate of Special Studies in Administration and Management.[a] 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 had received threats for using the name Mohammad in his short film Mohammad and Urvashi.

Filmography
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. Sattyajit Gazmer, the film's assistant director, also disputed Tanushree's allegations.

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 did "average" business at the box office. 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.

Agnihotri's 2014 erotic thriller Zid received poor reviews but did average business at the box office. However, Agnihotri has since claimed that credit for direction and screenplay was wrongly attributed to him, and that he was not involved with the film. The Tashkent Files received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics but became a sleeper box-office hit. In March 2022, Agnihotri released The Kashmir Files on the Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus.

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. Reviews in the Organiser and The New Indian Express had praised the work. 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.

Personal life
Agnihotri is married to Indian actor Pallavi Joshi 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.

Social media
Fact checkers have noted Agnihotri to have shared misleading content from his Twitter account. In September 2018, Twitter 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.

Bibliography

• Urban Naxals: The Making of Buddha in a Traffic Jam. Garuda Prakashan. 2018.
• Who Killed Shastri?: The Tashkent Files. Bloomsbury India. 2020.

Accolades

• Best Screenplay (Dialogues) at the 67th National Film Awards: The Tashkent Files.
• Best Writer and Director at Jakarta International Film Festival: Buddha in a Traffic Jam.