Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Shikara gets ringing endorsement from Avatar

Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Shikara gets ringing endorsement from Avatar director James Cameron: ‘A masterpiece’

HT Correspondent

16 hours ago

Filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra's upcoming film, Shikara, has been endorsed by none other than Avatar and Titanic director, James Cameron. Towards the end of the latest teaser of the film, a blurb by Cameron calling Shikara 'a masterpiece' is shown.

© Provided by Hindustan Times Newcomers Aadil Khan and Sadia in a poster for Shikara. ()

Cameron, along with another Oscar-winning filmmaker, Alfonso Cuaron, previously endorsed Chopra's Hollywood film, Broken Horses.

Shikara tells the story of over 400,000 Hindu refugees, who were forced to flee the Kashmir valley after the breakout of insurgency in the early 90s. Chopra, himself a Kashmiri Pandit, has said that Shikara is more than just a film, "It is a movement."

The film stars newcomers Sadia as Shanti Dhar and Aadil Khan as Shiv Kumar Dhar. Chopra also flew in approximately 4000 Pandits to shoot a key scene set in a refugee camp. "It's a tribute to the Pandit community, to us, to our mothers. Nobody listened to us for 30 years. Our story was hidden for the past 30 years," the director said at a recent event.

Speaking about his personal connection to the story, he told PTI, 'This is completely personal to me. It is my life. Just think about the scale of this tragedy. It is unbelievable to me that we have let it happen. My mother thought she will go back after two-three weeks or after few months or next year but she couldn't go back and that smile slowly vanished

Probably calling in a favour from Fox or something.....most likely Cameron never even saw the blurb....much less writing it...and still less watched the movie...just part of the contract. Doesn't mean a thing..

I remember such dubious praise for Broken Horses as well.

Lol. Remember Cuaron and his praise for Broken Horses 😆 It was all Fox's doing. That movie..the less said the better. Let's hope this one is 10x better than that. I want a no words minced and honest portrayal. Probably won't happen. Just glad the subject is atleast making its way to the screen. It's a story that deserves to be told as many times as possible so that history can never repeat itself. Just like the million Holocaust ones.