Vidhu Vinod Chopra

Biography

In the course of a celebrated career spanning over four decades, Vidhu Vinod Chopra has gifted Bollywood several landmark films as a filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer. An alumnus of the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India, Chopra first came to public attention when his student short Murder at Monkey Hill (1976) won the National Film Award for Best Short Experimental Film. 

His next venture, the documentary short An Encounter with Faces (1978), established the young writer-director as a wunderkind when it got nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject that year.

Subsequently, Chopra made his feature film directorial debut with Sazaye Maut (1981), which starred Naseeruddin Shah and Radha Saluja in the lead roles. This was followed by the thriller Khamosh (1985) and the crime drama Parinda (1989), the latter of which won two National Film Awards and five Filmfare Awards, and has since been widely hailed as one of the most iconic films in history of Hindi cinema. 

Two decades later, the director remade the film in Hollywood under the title Broken Horses (2015), but the remake failed to garner the same level of critical acclaim as the original.

In the 1990s, Chopra helmed just two films as a director, the period romance drama 1942: A Love Story (1994) and Kareeb (1998). A critical and commercial success, 1942: A Love Story was a milestone film in terms of its aesthetic appeal and technical brilliance, and went on to win several Filmfare Awards that year. 

Towards the third decade of his career, Chopra turned his focus to production and screenwriting, and his collaborations with filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani produced acclaimed blockbusters like Munna Bhai MBBS (2003), Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006), 3 Idiots (2009) and PK (2014). Besides these, he also wrote and produced the musical romantic drama Parineeta (2005) and the sports drama Ferrari Ki Sawaari (2012).

The action drama Mission Kashmir (2000) and the mystery drama Eklavya: The Royal Guard (2007) are some of Chopra`s notable directorial credits since 2000. Notable production credits in recent times include the crime thriller Wazir (2016) and the biographical drama Sanju (2018). His 2020 release includes Shikara, directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra.