My Brother Nikhil’s team gets nostalgic

Filmmaker Onir’s My Brother Nikhil (2005) is a film that clicked with the audience for all the right reasons. The film, dealt with the trauma faced by an AIDS patient due to lack of awareness about the disease and also talked about homosexuality at a time when such topics were being brushed under the carpet.

As the film completes 12 years today, we caught up with Onir and lead actors Juhi Chawla and Sanjay Suri, who share why the movie is so special.

Onir: Looking back, it has been a wonderful yet long journey. I still get requests for special screening of the film from across the world and it adds to my happiness that it is still relevant. Recently, I received an invitation from the University of London. I wonder that if the film released today, would we have managed a U-certificate like we got back then?

Sanjay Suri: I remember how some people told me that I am committing commercial suicide by working in this film. I think one day, may be, I can thank all those people who said no to us for making My Brother Nikhil because if we didn’t make it then, the entire fabric of the film would have been lost.

Juhi Chawla: I played Nikhil’s sister Anamika (Anu) and stood by him when the society rejected him. After having done big budget hit films, I was skeptical about the way Onir was shooting the film. But soon I started enjoying the experience.