At the International Film Festival of India, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Abhijat Joshi turned their on-stage conversation into a lively mix of performance, memory and craft, as Chopra sang, enacted scenes from his early struggles and unpacked how each phase of his life shaped films from “Parinda” to “1942: A Love Story” and “12th Fail.”
Celebrated screenwriter Joshi has worked exclusively with writer-producer-director Chopra for over 30 years, on his films such as “Lage Raho Munnabhai” and “3 Idiots”. During a session titled Unscripted – The Art and Emotion of Filmmaking, the conversation between the two long-time collaborators, on the stage at Kala Academy at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), was freewheeling, peppered with anecdotes and spontaneous performances.
73-year-old Chopra sang on stage and stood up to enact moments from his early days of struggle, including the hustle required to get a visa and passport in order to attend the Oscars when his short documentary film “An Encounter With Faces” received a nomination in 1979.
Chopra has directed a range of films from the gritty “Parinda” (1989) to the musical love story “1942: A Love Story” and the biographical drama “12th Fail” (2023).
The conversation began with Chopra breaking down how his filmmaking style had changed over the last five decades. “Every film reflects who I am at that point,” he said. “I was angry when I made “Parinda”. You can see that violence in the movie. Today I’m calmer.”
“12th Fail”, he said, came from witnessing corruption around him. “The film was my way of saying let’s be honest for a change. If I can change even 1% of the bureaucracy, that’s enough.”
The newly restored 8K version of his 1994 film “1942: A Love Story” screened at IFFI, an emotional experience for the filmmaker. “I saw it for the first time in 8K resolution in the theater here. I became so emotional seeing what they have done with colors, with sound. That’s a movie I can’t make anymore. I made it then because I was in love with a woman I married, and that love shows in the movie. For an artist, if I may use the word loosely, the right thing is to represent what he’s going through in his work. So I reflect what I see and feel,” he said.
Chopra explained that every film dictates its own process; preparation is not a formula but something that emerges from the content itself. Reflecting on “1942: A Love Story,” he recalled the painstaking effort behind even small visual moments, such as the shot of Manisha Koirala running with birds overhead. With no CGI available then, his team scattered breadcrumbs across a mountaintop at night so that real birds would appear at dawn. He also recounted an incident when actor Jackie Shroff, on his way to see Chopra, accidentally went to the wrong apartment, waking up a startled woman, and handing her flowers he had brought for his director. “The next morning, she told everyone in the neighborhood that she dreamt Jackie Shroff visited her,” Chopra said, leading to laughter and applause from the audience.
Joshi further highlighted how Chopra refused to churn out sequels to “Munna Bhai”or “3 Idiots”, even at great financial cost, choosing to wait years for the right script. When Joshi asked Chopra what is that particular emotional truth a filmmaker must not compromise on, the latter said, “This journey is very difficult but… always make a film that you believe in, stand by it and hope the audience also likes it.”
The session closed with “1942: A Love Story” writer Kamna Chandra and producer Yogesh Ishwar joining Chopra and Joshi on stage. Ishwar detailed the 8K restoration journey in Italy, cleaning the film frame by frame, the expanded color grading and sound remastering that finally allowed the film to appear as Chopra and cinematographer Binod Pradhan had envisioned it over 30 years ago.
