‘Kabir Singh’ Interview Was Wrongly Edited, Claims Sandeep Vanga

The director has been criticised for claiming that violence can be a show of love in a relationship.

Kabir Singh director Sandeep Vanga has claimed that his (now infamous) interview with Anupama Chopra for Film Companion, was "edited in a very wrong way” and some of his comments were taken out of context. The director has been receiving flak for lashing out at critics and vilifying feminists .

Vanga told Deccan Chronicle that his comments in the interview were misconstrued and “taken out of context”. He also claimed that the website had cut portions of his interview. “I had to say what  I had to say. And then they cut out portions of my comments. Now people don’t know what I said before and after those comments. The content was edited in a very wrong way so that a section of women got another chance to attack me. But I was trying to explain my protagonist’s mindset. Violence may be his way of expressing love. It’s not mine,” he said.

Addressing the backlash he received for claiming that when someone is deeply in love, it could lead to justifiably violent behaviour, Vanga defended his views saying that, “I never said one needs to slap. All I meant was, one needs to be fully honest in a committed relationship. And that honesty can take a violent form.” “My point is, in a true relationship the emotions can get raw and  violent,” he added.

In an interview published on Film Companion’s YouTube channel on 5 July, film critic Anupama Chopra questioned Sandeep Vanga on the criticism that his film Kabir Singh has been facing for its glorification of toxic masculinity and misogyny. Vanga responded that when you question people’s belief systems, they get angry. “I feel all the criticism the film faced is pseudo. When you are deeply in love there is honesty in the relationship. If you don’t have the liberty of slapping each other, I don’t see anything in that relation.”

He also took a dig at the female film critics who said they felt uncomfortable with the response from men who clapped during the scene where Kabir (played by Shahid Kapoor) slaps his girlfriend Preeti (Kiara Advani). “I think that these women were never in love and they never experienced it the right way,” he said.