Family ties

Onir needn’t worry. Even before its release, his debut My Brother, Nikhil has earned the approval of industry giants like Karan Johar and Aditya Chopra.

The story goes that Johar saw the first cut of the film and liked it so much that he spoke to Chopra, who agreed to handle the film’s worldwide distribution. ‘‘I must have smoked some 20 cigarettes while Karan was watching the film. He came out and told me that I’d made a beautiful film and that he couldn’t stop crying in the last half hour,’’ says the Bhutan-born, Kolkata-bred, Berlin-trained film-maker.

My Brother, Nikhil, based on a true incident in Goa, is a sensitive tale about a family that breaks up when the son (Sanjay Suri) tests positive for HIV. ‘‘The film is about acceptance, love, loss and relationships,’’ says Onir, also a co-producer.

Incidentally, this is Onir’s sixth script in the last four years. The former assistant to Prakash Jha, Sai Paranjape and Ram Gopal Varma (he edited the trailers of Bhoot) met nearly every producer in town, only to receive the standard reply. ‘‘These people were more concerned with making projects rather than films. They would hear my stories and tell me iske baad kuch commercial banao. My reasoning is that any film that makes money is commercial,’’ he declares passionately.

A chance meeting with Suri on the sets of Kalpana Lajmi’s Daman was the turning point. Suri liked the story of My Brother, Nikhil and got producers Vickey Tejwani and Raj Kaushal to co-fund the project, which has since produced a chain reaction of sorts in Bollywood.

People who’ve seen it have put the movie high on their recco list, resulting in a unique publicity campaign. Icons like Mahesh Bhupati, Rahul Dravid, Sania Mirza, and Abhishek Bachchan have also pledged their support. ‘‘We needed a campaign that could position the film uniquely and reflect its message of caring,’’ says Onir.

For someone who decided to make movies after watching Shashi Kapoor’s Junoon and Satyajit Ray’s Charulata, Onir has only one wish: ‘‘I want my

sister Irene, who teaches editing at FTII, to like the film. She’s my final judge and her approval matters most,’’ he says.

You’ll find a resonance to that in the film where sister Juhi Chawla narrates the story of her brother, Nikhil.