Chennai: ‘The Kashmir Files’ director Vivek Agnihotri has hinted at bringing on the big screen a film on the achievement of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in its fight against the COVID pandemic in the country.
According to the sources, the director has already started preparing for the same and is currently researching as to who were the scientists who played roles in preparing the vaccines.
The idea of telling the story on the big screen came after Agnihotri travelled in various countries, during which he also tested positive for COVID and had to confront the medical infrastructure of the foreign nations.
In an exclusive interview with ANI, Agnihotri said, “In the last six to seven months, I’ve been travelling all over the world. I was in US, Germany, UK, Netherlands, and Hungary. In fact, in all developed countries of the world and in between, my wife and I also got COVID there. I realised that their infrastructure, and awareness was very poor about COVID.”
“The RTPCR test is so expensive, takes 48 hours to seven days in the US. General hygiene culture was also very poor. So it triggered in my mind that what is it that we (India) have been able to achieve so successfully? So I started reading about it more and trying to understand all that, and I must tell you, this world talks in terms of India as an underdeveloped country, but this is what India, especially what Indian Council for Medical Research, and their scientists and NIV, the women scientists are doing,” he added.
The filmmaker said that he thought the story of those who achieved the “greatest” success should be captured on the screen.
“Regular ordinary people without resources, what they have achieved is the greatest success story of humanity. So, I started thinking whether it should be captured on cinema or not, and should be documented or not,” he said.
Agnihotri said that he is still researching the subject and acknowledged the message that “if you want to achieve something, resources don’t matter, only your will matters”.
“I’m still researching because I’m not so deep into it. If you want to achieve something, what matters is what you feel about humanity,” he said.
He appreciated the work done by the team of ICMR scientists.
“One thing is talking about humanity politically, but one thing is what you actually do for humanity, and I had tears in my eyes when I read the story of how our scientists had to struggle in Iran. You know, the kind of threats, but still they evacuated every single person is a great story, I think this is the greatest story of independent India since freedom,” said Agnihotri while lauding the scientists.
Eulogising India’s successfully ongoing vaccination drive under which a feat of administering over 200 crore doses was reached recently, ‘The Kashmir Files’ director said that this is the story which should be seen by the countries in the world.
“So a country which had only one lab and no resources. Everybody said India can never ever make a vaccine. There were so many agencies working against us. How we created our own vaccine widely and administered 200 crore doses. I think this is the story that everybody from Tanzania to Tokyo should be seeing,” Agnihotri said. (
Shalini Bhardwaj/ANI)
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