Siddharth Anand says Fighter’s dialogues are ‘all me’, shares that he is ‘fiercely patriotic’: ‘Pulwama incident really angered me’

Siddharth, who comes from the family of filmmakers Mukul Anand and Tinnu Anand known for making films like Agneepath and Hum, shared that he grew up on Hindi films with dialogue-baazi and he really enjoys that. “Dialogue-baazi is what I love and very rarely do I get an opportunity in my films to do that,” he said. He added that the lines ring true to Hrithik’s character in the film as he is doing it for the love of his country. “It’s not like their paycheque is so huge that they are doing it for their lifestyle,” he said.

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On being asked why Indian films, like Fighter, have Pakistan for the enemy in their films, as opposed to something like Top Gun where the villains are faceless, Siddharth said that as an audience, “we need a face.” He added that he did not want to make a completely fictitious film on the Air Force. “I was certain that I didn’t want to make a fictitious film on the Air Force in a genre that is anyway a little alien to us, so I wanted to ground it,” he said and added, “Pulwama was an incident that really angered me. It was movie waiting to happen on what they did. We obviously had to fictionalise a lot of things around it. We had to name the organisation that did it so we have named the organisation, nothing else.”

Fighter also stars Anil Kapoor, Karan Singh Grover, Akshay Oberoi and Deepika Padukone.