The Tashkent Files

The Tashkent Files
File:The Tashkent Files- Movie Poster.jpeg Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Vivek Agnihotri
Written by	Vivek Agnihotri (Dialogue)
Screenplay by	Vivek Agnihotri
Starring	Naseeruddin Shah Mithun Chakraborty Shweta Basu Prasad Pankaj Tripathi Mandira Bedi Pallavi Joshi
Cinematography	Uday Singh Mohite
Edited by	Sattyajit Gazmer
Music by	Songs: Rohit Sharma Score: Satya Mannik Afasr
Production companies	SP CineCorp Vivek Agnihotri Creates
Distributed by	Zee Studios
Release date	12 April 2019 (2019-04-12)
Running time	144 minutes
Country	India
Language	Hindi
Budget	₹2.55 crore
Box office	est. ₹5.80 crore

The Tashkent Files is a 2019 Indian Hindi-language thriller film about the death of former Indian prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. Written and directed by Vivek Agnihotri, it stars Naseeruddin Shah and Mithun Chakraborty in leading roles. The film released on 12th April 2019 to poor reviews from mainstream critics but was well recieved by general audience.

Cast

• Naseeruddin Shah as PKR Natrajan
• Mithun Chakraborty as Shyam Sunder Tripathi
• Shweta Basu Prasad as Raagini Phule
• Mandira Bedi as Indira Joseph Roy
• Pallavi Joshi as Aiysha Ali Shah
• Rajesh Sharma as Omkar Kashyap
• Vinay Pathak as Mukhtar
• Pankaj Tripathi as Gangaram Jha
• Vishwa Mohan Badola as Justice Kurian Abraham
• Prakash Belawadi as GK Anantha Suresh
• Achint Kaur as Natarajan
• Yusuf Hussain
• Prashant Gupta as Vivendra Pratap Singh Rana
• Ankur Rathee as Imran Qureshi

Production

Vivek Agnihotri the director of the film announced the film in January 2018. Commenting on the story of the film he stated that The Tashkent Files is going to be country’s first crowd-sourced thriller. He further stated that the film will be made after doing research work on Shastriji as it will be an apolitical film about a political leader. The filming began in January 2018. In February 2018 he invited from the public any information, book, link or memory related to Lal Bahadur Shastri’s mysterious death in Tashkent to help him solve the 'decades old enigma' surrounding the death of former prime minister of India. On 6 January 2019 Agnihotri giving details of his film announced the tentative release date.

Marketing and release

Releasing first look poster of the film on 19 March 2019, the release date of the film was announced as 12 April 2019. On 25 March 2019, Zee Studios unveiled the official trailer on YouTube.

Reception

Critical response

Many critics noted that the film was probably inspired by the Hollywood cult-classic 12 Angry Men and looked at different versions of truth. Veteran actor, Mithun Chakraborty garnered rave reviews for his acting. Rachit Gupta of Times of India rated the film with two and half stars out of five and praised it's theme but lamented the lack of talent in its characters, despite a star-cast He also heavily criticized its direction, story-telling and songs to be quite sub-optimal and concludes that:- "It also doesn’t help that the final slide of the movie tells the audience that the authenticity of all the facts displayed in the film cannot be verified." Devesh Sharma of Filmfare gives the film two and half stars out of five and noted the film to be a 'melodramatic' episode with loud and over the top acting coupled with bombastic dialogues. He further notes the film to be biased against a certain political party and that it ought have been launched after the national elections, which were running concurrently.

Rahul Desai writing for Film Companion rated the film with one star out of five. Noting it to be a 'PhD. in whataboutery', he noted the film to be "not informed enough to be a documentary, not balanced enough to be a docudrama and not smart enough to be an investigative thriller." Writing for Scroll.in, Nandini Ramnath noted it to be a politically motivated film that did not have any rigor and failed to be an effective conspiracy thriller. Saibal Chatterjee, writing for NDTV rated the film with half star out of five and noted it to be an example of Google search film-making and concludes "Well, the actors may not be trash, but their performances scrape the bottom of the barrel. And the film? If you still haven't got it, it is JUNK." A review over India Today rated it one out of five stars and noted it to be a politically motivated film that did not have any logic and might be easily dispensed with. A review over The Hindu noted it to be an ideological slideshow that exploited Shastri's death to attack left, secular and socialist ideologies and institutions and though based on an engaging topic, was a 'hotch-potch of hearsay, juvenile arguments' that ultimately lend to utter confusion rather than any conviction.Another review over News18 India rated it one out of five stars and noted it to be a politically motivated film with unconvincing arguments and made for a dull watch.A review in the The First Post asserted it to be a politically motivated film and rated it two out of five stars. Noting Agnihotri to neither have the finesse nor the potency to sketch a conspiracy thriller, the reviewer deemed it to be a cheap trick, that was high on hysteria but lacked logic amidst a focus-less frenzied story telling that did not venture beyond the realms of Google. A review in The Indian Express deemed it to be an ideal fiction film for the 'post-truth, fake news era' that was politically motivated in entirety and consisted of a series of eye-roll moments with unintentionally hilarious dialogues. The Print reviewed it to be a shoddy jab at film-making that harnessed a mish-mash of unformed characters and incomplete plots whilst lacking factual logic. Jyoti Sharma Bawa, reviewing for The Hindustan Times rated it one out of five stars whilst noting it to be disgusting political propaganda that hardly contained any truth and presented nothing new beyond the realms of an internet-crawl. Bollywood Hungama gave one and a half stars out of five. Anusha Iyengar, reviewing for Times Now gave two out of five stars, praising it's story but criticizing it's over-the-top dramatization and attempt at storytelling, that was amateurish. A review over Arre.co criticized the film as an endless cycle of whataboutery, directed by a dedicated by a historical revisionist, which was nothing but an assault on common sense.Manavi Kapur, reviewing the film at Business Standard, noted it to be shoddily written, that was not even worthy enough for a daytime opera slot. Shashank Shekhar of Desimartini gave the film 4.5 stars out 5.

Soundtrack

The Tashkent Files
Soundtrack album by Rohit Sharma
Recorded	2018
Genre	Feature film soundtrack
Label	Zee Music Company
Rohit Sharma chronology
Anaarkali of Aarah (2017) The Tashkent Files (2019)

The music of the film is composed by Rohit Sharma while the lyrics are penned by Aazad, Rohit Sharma and Vivek Agnihotri.

Track listing

No.	Title	Lyrics	Singer(s)	Length
1.	"Saare Jahan Se Acchha"	Rohit Sharma, Vivek Agnihotri	Jayaraman Mohan, Arya Acharya, RJ Archana, RJ Anuraag Pandey, RJ Rohini, Ekdant Kalakshetra, Swara Sharma, Nyonishi Cousins	3:42

External links

• The Tashkent Files at IMDb
• The Tashkent Files on Bollywood Hungama