Towards a world without borders

Kaashvie Nair’s directorial debut celebrates bond with grandparents

Veteran filmmaker and National Award winner Shashilal Nair’s daughter Kaashvie Nair made her debut as director recently with the film Sardar Ka Grandson.

Kaashvie, who had made short films during her college days, started working with Nikhil Advani, as a Director’s Assistant (DA) on the Akshay Kumar starrer Patiala House and went on to be an assistant director.

Shashilal Nair, who has made films like Falak, Angaar and Grahan once had Salman Khan as his assistant. “When I told him that I wanted to make films, he didn’t take me seriously and thought I was stuck by the glamour. But he came to realise that I was serious and I went on to work with Nikhil Advani,” Kaashvie says. After Kaashvie got to direct some parts of the limited TV series POW — Bandi Yuddh Ke, Monisha Advani, one of the producers, came across an article about a person who moved their house brick by brick from Kerala to another place. “Then there was this documentary about a man who goes back to see his Lahore home after 70 years of Independence. And we decided to give it a cross border feel. We got Anuja Chauhan to write the story and Amitosh Nagpal to do the dialogues for a film which has Neena Gupta playing 90-year-old grandmother to Arjun Kapoor, who seeks to fulfil her wish to see her ancestral house in Lahore,” says the young debutant.

This is her second cross-border project after POW. Kaashvie says “I have always believed in a world without borders. The people from India and Pakistan are the same and have similar emotions towards each other.”

The film also stars Rakul Preet Singh, with John Abraham and Aditi Rao Hydari in guest roles.