The Tashkent Files

<p>A young journalist, Raagini Phule, whose career is threatened and looking for a receives help from an anonymous informer which leads to the formation of a panel of experts by the government, which also includes Raagini, to investigate the truth about the mysterious death of India’s former . The collected information is scrutinised and debated over by the panel in an attempt to unravel the truth. The film was announced in January 2018 as India’s first “crowd-sourced” thriller. began in January 2018. In February 2018 he invited from the public any information, book, link or memory related to ’s in to help him solve the ‘decades old enigma’ surrounding the death of former Prime Minister of India. Books referenced for and referred in the film include by , by Gregory Douglas, and by . First poster was released on 19 March 2019, and on the same occasion, the release date was announced as 12 April 2019. The film was also simultaneously released on service . Agnihotri touted the film to be the first instalment of his trilogy of “untold stories of independent India”, which is followed by (2022) and an upcoming film . received overwhelmingly negative reviews. On , the film holds a 0% approval rating based on 8 reviews. Devesh Sharma of gave two and half stars out of five; it was a ‘melodramatic’ episode with loud and over the top acting coupled with bombastic dialogues. Sharma found the film to be biased against a certain political party and wondered about its release during the national elections, which were running concurrently. Writing for , Nandini Ramnath found it to be a politically motivated work that did not have any rigor and failed to be an effective conspiracy thriller. , writing for rated the film with half star out of five — the research that went into the production was equivalent of a Google search film-making and overall, it was “junk.” Jyoti Sharma Bawa, reviewing for the rated it one out of five stars and reiterated Chatterjee. gave one and a half stars out of five — all the research that went into the work was derived from internet, esp. social media. A review over 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 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 rated it one out of five stars and noted it to be a politically motivated film with unconvincing arguments, that made for a dull watch. A review in 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 storytelling that did not venture beyond the realms of Google. A review in deemed it to be the ideal politically-motivated fiction for the ‘post-truth, fake news era’ — a series of eye-roll moments with unintentionally hilarious dialogues. found it to be a shoddy jab at film-making that harnessed a mish-mash of unformed characters and incomplete plots devoid of logic. gave one and a half stars out of five. Anusha Iyengar, reviewing for , gave two out of five stars, praising the story but taking issues with over-the-top dramatization that reeked of amateurish storytelling. Manavi Kapur, reviewing the film at , found it unworthy for even a daytime opera slot. Shilajit Mitra, reviewing for remarked it to be an exhausting head-spin of a political propaganda, that became weirder with time. Stutee Ghosh of found it to be a prejudiced, amateurish and cringe-worthy film with an uninspiring storytelling that banked on crowd-sourced research; she rated one star out of five. The film became a box-office . The music of the film is composed by while the lyrics are penned by Aazad, Rohit Sharma and . is a non-fiction book by director Vivek Agnihotri about his research for the film and outlines various theories about the . It was released in August 2020 by .</p>