Although Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Shikara did not do well at the box office, it managed to connect with Oscar-winning director James Cameron, who saw the Hindi film and was reminded of his favorite movie, Doctor Zhivago. During a session on day one of IFP Season 14, the 12th Fail director talked about how he became close to the Avatar director over a glass of wine.
Shikara depicted a Kashmiri couple’s love story against the backdrop of the 1990s exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. Chopra said that although he was focused on his next project, his team asked him if he had read about the reaction to the 2020 film on social media.
Read also: Shikara: “I didn’t see the failure because when James Cameron saw the film in New Zealand, he walked up to me and said, ‘This film reminds me of my favourite film in the world, ‘Doctor Zhivago,’” he said, referring to the 1965 love story set in war-torn Russia. The better film about the Kashmir conflict, but you chose to make the wrong one a hit. Even though Cameron doesn’t drink a lot, he and Chopra went to a movie theater to have a drink.
