Vidhu Vinod Chopra

Chopra was born and brought up in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India to a Punjabi Hindu family.^[1] His father was D. N. Chopra and veteran filmmaker Ramanand Sagar was his half-brother.^[2] His brother, Vir K. Chopra, was a scholar of Indian politics and worked as a producer.^[3] His parents were originally from Peshawar, British India.^[4] His mother was Shanti Devi Mahalakshmi, who left Kashmir, due to the Kashmir conflict in 1990. He dedicated his film Shikara to his mother.^[5] He studied film direction at the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune.^[6]

Chopra's first student short film, Murder at Monkey Hill (1976), won the National Film Award for Best Short Experimental Film and the Guru Dutt Memorial Award for Best Student Film.^[7]

This was followed by a short documentary highlighting the plight of India's destitute children, called An Encounter with Faces (1976), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film in 1979. It also won the Grand Prix at the Tampere Film Festival in 1980.^[8]

Sazaye Maut, his first full-length feature film, was an adaptation of his previous short, Murder at Monkey Hill. It starred Naseeruddin Shah, Radha Saluja and Dilip Dhawan. Vanraj Bhatia composed the music for the film.

He founded his own production company, Vinod Chopra Films, in 1985. Since then, the company has gone on to produce major Bollywood films, and is currently one of the biggest and most successful film production houses in India.

Chopra directed and produced Khamosh (1986), which starred prominent Indian actors such as Shabana Azmi, Amol Palekar, Naseeruddin Shah and Pankaj Kapoor, among others. The movie is set in Kashmir and has been praised by critics as an inventive meta thriller.

His next directorial, the crime drama Parinda (1989), proved to be a landmark film in Hindi cinema. It expanded the orbit of the crime drama and the vocabulary of images used in Hindi films while garnering widespread critical acclaim and numerous awards. Several modern Indian filmmakers have expressed their admiration for and drawn inspiration from Chopra's film.

Chopra's next film, 1942: A Love Story (1994), was a patriotic romantic drama set during the decline of the British Raj. With Anil Kapoor and Manisha Koirala in lead roles, it was also the last film to have its music composed by the legendary R. D. Burman. Burman received a Filmfare Award for Best Music Director and the film won a total of nine awards at the 40th Filmfare Awards. His following two films, Kareeb and Mission Kashmir, were also critically and commercially successful.

Chopra then produced 5 films with filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani: Munna Bhai MBBS, Lage Raho Munna Bhai, 3 Idiots, PK, and Sanju. The first 3, which Chopra also co-wrote, each won the National Film Award for Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment, and Lage Raho Munna Bhai also won the National Film Award for Best Screenplay. They were all also very commercially successful, with 3 Idiots and PK becoming the highest grossing Indian films of all time in India and worldwide, also breaking into East Asian markets.^[9] He also wrote and produced Parineeta, Ferrari Ki Sawaari, and Wazir.

However, Chopra's next directorials after 2000 were not as successful. His 2007 film Eklavya: The Royal Guard was a financial disappointment. He also made his Hollywood directorial debut in 2015 with the film Broken Horses, a remake of his own film Parinda. However, it received a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 22%,^[10] and was a commercial disaster, only making Rs. 60 lakh in its opening weekend.^[11] His 2020 release Shikara was a romantic drama about the Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus. It became his lowest-grossing film since Khamosh.

Chopra then saw a return to success with his 2023 release, the biopic 12th Fail. Despite a low opening day box office, due to great reviews and word of mouth, it became a financial hit, grossing 70 crores on a 20 crore budget.^[12] It then won 5 Filmfare Awards, including Best Film, Director, Screenplay, and Editing for Chopra.

He has been married thrice, his first wife was noted editor Renu Saluja (m. 1976–1983), he was then married to filmmaker Shabnam Sukhdev (m. 1985–1989), the daughter of S. Sukhdev (1933–1979) a well known director of documentaries for the Films Division of India. He has a daughter with Shabnam, Ishaa Chopra, who works as a dance instructor and choreographer.^[14]

He is currently married to Indian film critic Anupama Chopra, whom he married on 1 June 1990.^[15] He has two children with her, a son, Agni and a daughter, Zuni Chopra.^[16]