At the Indian International Film Festival, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Abhijat Joshi transformed their on-stage conversation into a vibrant combination of performance, memory and technique, with Chopra singing, acting out scenes of his early struggles and revealing how each stage of his life has shaped his films, from Parinda to 1942 to The Twelfth Failure.
Renowned screenwriter Joshi has worked exclusively with screenwriter, producer and director Chopra for over three decades on films such as ‘Rage Raho Munnabhai’ and ‘3 Idiots’. During a session titled ‘Unscripted – The Art and Emotions of Filmmaking’ held on the Kala Academy stage at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), the conversation between the two long-time collaborators was free-flowing, interspersed with anecdotes and spontaneous performances.
Ms. Chopra, 73, rose to sing on stage and act out early moments of struggle, including the struggle required to obtain a visa and passport to attend the Oscars, when her 1979 documentary short “Face Encounters” was nominated.
Chopra has directed a wide range of films, from the gritty Parinda (1989) to the musical love story 1942: A Love Story to the biographical drama The Twelfth Failure (2023).
The conversation began with Chopra explaining how his filmmaking style has changed over the past 50 years. “Every movie is a reflection of me at that point in time,” he said. “When I made ‘Parinda’, I was angry. That violence can be seen in the film. Today I am calm.”
He said his “12th failure” was due to witnessing corruption around him. “This film was my way of being honest for change. If I can change even 1% of the bureaucracy, that’s enough.”
A newly restored 8K version of the 1994 film 1942 was shown at IFFI, an emotional experience for the filmmaker. “I saw this movie for the first time in 8K resolution in a theater here. I was so moved by what they were doing with the colors and the sounds. That movie is a movie I can’t make anymore. I made it because I was in love with a married woman at the time, and that love… It’s reflected in the film. For an artist, to use this term loosely, it’s about expressing what you’re experiencing in your work, so I reflect what I see and what I feel,” he said.
Chopra explained that every film determines its own process. Preparation comes from the content itself, not the formula. Reflecting on “1942: A Love Story,” he recalled the painstaking effort behind small visual moments, such as the shot of Manisha Koirala running with a bird on her head. CGI wasn’t available at the time, so his team scattered breadcrumbs on mountain peaks at night so that the real birds would emerge at dawn. He also talked about an incident when actor Jackie Shroff accidentally went to the wrong apartment on his way to meet Chopra, woke up a startled woman, and handed her the flowers he had brought for the director. “The next morning, she told her neighbors that she had dreamed that Jackie Shroff came to visit her,” Chopra said, to laughter and applause from the audience.
Joshi further highlighted that Chopra refused to churn out sequels to Munna Bhai or Three Idiots, even at great financial cost, and chose to wait years for a suitable script. When Joshi asked Chopra what special emotional truths filmmakers must not compromise on, Chopra said, “This journey is very difficult, but…I always make films that I believe in, stand by, and hope that audiences like them too.”
The session concluded with “1942: A Love Story” screenwriter Kamna Chandra and producer Yogesh Ishwar joining Chopra and Joshi on stage. Ishwar detailed the journey of an 8K restoration in Italy, how the film underwent frame-by-frame cleaning, extensive color grading and sound remastering, ultimately allowing Chopra and cinematographer Vinod Pradhan to create the film exactly as they had envisioned it over 30 years ago.
