My heroes have always cried in my films –Imtiaz Ali

The masterclass began with the felicitation of the filmmakers by Amit Satija, CEO, ESG and Ankur Lahoty, AD, DFF.

To honour Rahul Rawail, the session saw the clips of his movies Arjun and Dacoit followed by the screening of Imtiaz Ali’s short film India Tomorrow.

Filmmaker Rahul Rawail said, “You learn while watching films and understand what other people have done. There were incidences in Arjun where Sunny Deol cried but he didn’t cry the way he should at that point of time but what Imtiaz has done in his films, that is commendable.”

“My elder son Bharat heads the creatives at YRF and the younger one Shiv is soon going to be launched as a director by YRF. When I made Love Story, Amjad Khan was Gabbar Singh and I wanted to cast him for the role of a funny constable, people called me crazy but he fit the role. I was in the middle of shooting Arjun and I thought of removing Dimple Kapadia from the film…also shortened the runtime of the film but my producers didn’t approve of this and even forced me to add more scenes,” he shared.

Director Imtiaz Ali said, “I got inspired to make films by filmmakers Rahul Rawail and J P Dutta since they were about travel. The reflection of their films is visible in my films. The background of movie Arjun was very unconventional. In fact, in Pahalgam, their is lake called Betaab valley on the name of the film.”

“It is said that cinema is inspirational, We say cinema lets you do whatever you can’t do in the real life. Being a guy, I never cried and my mother used to call me heartless… funnily but on the other hand, my male protagonists have always cried in my films,” he added.

He further stated, “A lot of people come to me and say that my films have broken the stereotypes of Karan Johar and YRF but it is definitely not in my conscious. What I write in my scripts and show in my films, doesn’t mean I have seen that earlier.”