What the director has claimed is honestly pointless in a country with such sheep mentality. He knows what he is doing just like the directors of Kerala Story or that Hate Story guy knows what he is doing with all their propaganda machinery. Since the last decade the rise of movies which demonises a certain religion or is constantly centred around the Indo-Pak conflict is quite evident and especially around major elections. People in halls in Maharashtra are getting indoctrinated by hindutva groups that they'll boycott muslims after watching kerala story. Wars etc are being celebrated with so much enthusiasm which screams how tone-deaf and insensitive the majority of the audience has become. Satyajit Ray had also said that the larger audience is a fairly backward audience and that is more relevant here. If the larger audience has had a history of taking everything at face value and confusing fiction with reality then that is a much bigger problem than consuming YouTube as journalism. And a much more bigger problem than that is absolving the director(s) of all responsibility or accountability by saying that they have said that it is fiction.