The Tashkent Files

A young journalist writes about the death of India's second prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, in Tashkent in 1966. The death was officially recorded as a heart attack; no autopsy was performed and the family voiced doubts for years. When the story becomes news the government forms a commission of inquiry. It includes a historian, a politician, a journalist and an intelligence officer, and none of them believes the same thing. Vivek Agnihotri writes and directs. The cast includes Naseeruddin Shah, Mithun Chakraborty, Pallavi Joshi and Shweta Basu Prasad. The structure is a debating room. The narrative takes place largely in the commission's sittings, each member arguing a case; the shape deliberately resembles a courtroom drama. Shastri's death is genuinely contested in India and the official documents were withheld for a long time; the film builds it as a conspiracy narrative. Its politics are open and were argued over. Agnihotri is a director close to a particular political line and the film takes direct aim at the Congress party; it was both praised and sharply attacked in India for that. The method is to produce doubt rather than evidence; the film gives no answer and does so deliberately. Pallavi Joshi won a national film award for her performance. Who it is for: anyone interested in conspiracy narratives and Indian political history. Who it is not for: the film takes a side, most of the historical claims are unverified, and the narrative is all talk.