World AIDS Day: Sanjay Suri recalls being told ‘it’s commercial suicide’ while doing My Brother Nikhil-OxBig News Network

On World Aids Day, Suri recalls, “Initially, I was told that ‘Hey, this is just the beginning of your career. This is commercial suicide.’ Literally this was the term but I said that ‘I am happy’ and then they asked ‘why do you need to produce it also with your friends’ But we wanted to tell the story and I am really glad that I did that.”

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The film also starred Juhi Chawla, Purab Kohli, Victor Banerjee and others and did several rounds of international film festivals. Suri, 53, shares that while the film with such a strong social message was applauded elsewhere, back in Bollywood it went unnoticed by the mainstream industry. However, the film was very well received by the critics. 

“The film was loved all over the world and even used by a lot of colleges, even the armed forced for advocacy and sensatization while the film industry completely ignored it. We didn’t get any awards that year in the industry while we were winning accolades all over the world,” he says.

The actor shares that he personally knew “families both in India and USA where the film’s point of view helped in changing perceptions of several families” who had disconnected with their HIV Positive members and that he still meets youngsters in their 20s, who are “discovering the film now.”

In the sea of re-releases in India currently, would My Brother…Nikhil’s re-release have any different result?

“These things keep happening one-off but a commercial release has a big dependence on advertising and I don’t think that’s the answer.” concludes the actor.