Vivek Agnihotri’s dig at Leena Manimekalai over Kaali poster row: ‘Can someone dismantle such crazy wokes’

Vivek Agnihotri has taken a dig at fellow filmmaker Leena Manimekalai over the controversial poster of her film Kaali. Leena had defended the poster–which showed Hindu goddess Kaali smoking a cigarette–in an interview. It invited a sarcastic comment from Vivek, who called for ‘dismantling such wokes’. Also read: How Leena Manimekalai defends her Kaali poster

Leena has been facing online backlash and an FIR, for her film poster, Kaali. Apart from the the smoking, a flag of the LGBT community is seen in the background. Last week, Leena took to Twitter, sharing an interview she had given to a foreign news outlet, defending the poster. With the link, she shared one of her quotes from the interview, which said, “My Kaali is queer. She is a free spirit. She spits at the patriarchy. She dismantles Hindutva. She destroys capitalism; She embraces everyone with all her thousand hands.” Vivek shared the tweet with a number of tongue-out emojis and wrote, “Can someone dismantle such crazy wokes? Please.”

Vivek, best known for films like The Kashmir Files and The Tashkent Files, recently saw his own talk at Oxford Union in the UK being cancelled. In a tweet, he called it ‘intellectual terrorism’ and wrote “in UK, there is no free speech”.

Earlier, Leena had shared messages showing that she is receiving death threats over the issue. In an earlier tweet, she had said she won’t bow down though. She shared a tweet by author Mira Kamdar and wrote, “These trolls are after my artistic freedom. If I give away my freedom fearing this mindless rightwing mob mafia, I will give away everyone’s freedom. So I will keep it, come what may.”

Leena’s film Kaali was screened in Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum recently as part of a festival. After complaints that the poster hurt religious sentiments, the museum issued an apology. The issue has since snowballed into a major controversy with politicians and celebs all weighing in on it.

Madhya Pradesh home minister Narottam Mishra wrote to Twitter urging to devise a mechanism to examine and filter out potentially provocative and objectionable content. Following this, Twitter also removed the images of the poster from the platform. Madhya Pradesh police has issued a lookout circular for Leena as well. The filmmaker was born in Tamil Nadu’s Madurai and is based in Toronto.