Summary
- He said you cannot set out to make a film with a rigid social agenda, because doing so turns it into propaganda rather than a movie, and people go to a cinema hall to watch a good story, not a message.
- Reflecting on his collaboration with Shah Rukh Khan on Dunki, and why the film did not achieve the same widespread reach as 3 Idiots, Hirani explained that a film’s reach depends entirely on how universal its subject is.
- Despite the film’s narrower reach, Hirani said he remains fulfilled by the emotional resonance it found with a specific audience.
Filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani has spent his career carving out a distinct space in an industry built on rigid formulas, and in a recent reflective conversation, he opened up about the resistance he faced early on and why some films connect with audiences far more widely than others.
Before becoming the director behind some of Indian cinema’s biggest hits, Hirani was an outsider pitching an unconventional concept. While preparing for his directorial debut, Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., the response from the industry was discouraging. He recalled people telling him directly that the project made no sense, questioning why he was taking an action hero like Sanjay Dutt and setting an entire film inside a hospital.
The resistance followed him into his next project, Lage Raho Munna Bhai. On the day the film released, the pressure escalated sharply. Hirani recalled producer Vinod Chopra calling him to say that effigies were being burned in Delhi. The backlash, triggered by the film’s creative framing and its use of the term Gandhi, dissolved within forty eight hours after the then Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit and Mahatma Gandhi’s great grandson Tushar Gandhi praised the film as a brilliant tribute.
For Hirani, these early experiences shaped a core belief about filmmaking. He said you cannot set out to make a film with a rigid social agenda, because doing so turns it into propaganda rather than a movie, and people go to a cinema hall to watch a good story, not a message. He added that genuine belief in a project is the only thing that carries a filmmaker through the year it takes to make a film.
Reflecting on his collaboration with Shah Rukh Khan on Dunki, and why the film did not achieve the same widespread reach as 3 Idiots, Hirani explained that a film’s reach depends entirely on how universal its subject is. He pointed out that every middle class household in India connects directly with the education system and parental pressure depicted in 3 Idiots, since it is a daily reality for them.
Dunki, by contrast, dealt with a more specific and regional issue, the realities of illegal immigration and the dangerous donkey flight routes used by migrants. Hirani explained that the typical, affluent theatre going audience in Indian cities can usually secure passports and visas without much difficulty, making the desperation of being denied a visa a distant concept for them. He added that the people who actually endure these hardships are often entirely outside the world of cinema going.
Despite the film’s narrower reach, Hirani said he remains fulfilled by the emotional resonance it found with a specific audience. He shared that he continues to receive long, deeply moving messages from South Asian diaspora communities abroad, who tell him they felt truly seen and understood by how the film portrayed identity and displacement.
He summed up his outlook by saying a filmmaker’s career naturally moves through highs and lows, with some stories destined to reach massive audiences while others are meant to hold up a mirror to a more specific, often overlooked part of the human experience.
