‘Audience Recognise Authenticity before Experts’: Mahesh Bhatt on ‘Main Vaapas Aaunga’
New Delhi: Veteran filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt has hailed Imtiaz Ali’s Main Vaapas Aaunga as a rare film that listens to the “deeper movements of the human heart” at a time when cinema is increasingly dominated by spectacle and testosterone-driven storytelling.
Bhatt’s praise comes as the Partition drama has staged a remarkable turnaround at the box office. “Sometimes audiences recognise authenticity before experts do,” Bhatt said, describing the film’s gradual rise as proof that emotionally truthful storytelling can still find a large audience. After opening to a tepid response, the film steadily gained momentum through strong word of mouth and has gone on to gross Rs 70.8 crore worldwide since its release on June 12.
Directed by Imtiaz Ali, the film stars Naseeruddin Shah as a 95-year-old man struggling through fading and muddled memories to piece together the story of a love he never fulfilled. Vedang Raina and Sharvari play the young lovers in Sargodha — now in Pakistan — whose lives are torn apart by Partition, while Diljit Dosanjh appears as Shah’s grandson.
Bhatt said the film stands out because it chooses intimacy over noise, focusing on memory, longing and loss rather than larger-than-life spectacle. With its combination of Partition-era romance, generational memory, and a veteran performance from Shah, Main Vaapas Aaunga has become one of the year’s most talked-about Hindi films.
