Thirty years ago, filmmaker Sooraj Barjatya and actor Neena Gupta received their first National Award honours for Hum Aapke Hain Koun and Woh Chokri (1994), respectively. On Friday, they received their second National Award, this time for (2022)—a film they collaborated on. The relationship drama earned Barjatya the Best Director honour, while Gupta won the Best Supporting Actor award at the 70th National Awards.
ADVERTISEMENT The award is particularly special for as Uunchai marked his comeback after a seven-year gap. “When I was writing a film for Salman Khan, a voice inside me told me to make Uunchai. I felt it was time to offer movies that [come] from my soul rather than trying to make what sells.
Uunchai is the most layered film that I have made. In my films, I usually take up happy moments of life and create a happy [movie] around it. This is the first time that I had a clear story with such strong and layered characters,” he says of the film, which also stars Amitabh Bachchan, Anupam Kher, Boman Irani, Danny Denzongpa, Parineeti Chopra, and Sarika.
Barjatya recalls a journalist once telling him that stories of friendship are usually made with youngsters but rarely with older people. Gupta, who has had an eventful career since 1982, has starred in several unconventional films. She began her second innings in cinema with Amit Sharma’s Badhaai Ho (2018), which catapulted her back into the limelight.
“Uunchai was not just a story of four people. It touched on so m.