For director Hansal Mehta, his entire career changed with the 2013 film Shahid. Based on lawyer-human rights activist Shahid Azmi, the film revolves around his fight for justice for those falsely accused of terrorism but in the end, he is assassinated. It starred actor Rajkummar Rao and went on to garner acclaim and awards.

But the director still rues one thing: “What upsets me is that the film isn’t available on any streaming platform today. A censored version is there on YouTube and that bothers me because the film had nothing that needed to be censored.”

The 55-year-old adds that the biggest challenge while filming was, in fact, the shoot itself. Mehta recalls, “It was a challenge just to be able to shoot those days. We used to go to shoot every day, thinking let’s survive somehow, kal ka kal dekhenge. We would shoot with limited funds, literally beg for locations and shoot. We used to pray that we would get the camera we wanted for the shoot that day. It was a struggle but also a great joy as we used to go back every day satisfied after the shoot.”

Rao, on the other hand, saw his career take a complete U-turn after he was conferred the National Award for Best Actor for the film.

Mehta remembers how the announcement was made, “I was mixing for my film Citylights (2014) that day and I didn’t know the awards were being announced. My producer kept calling me. When I finished two reels, I came out of the room and then he told me. The phone never stopped ringing after that. Rajkummar was shooting Dolli Ki Doli that day so we met after his shoot. I had already gone to bed when he said, ‘Come down, I want to see and hug you’. We met in the parking lot, and were so happy.”