Vidhu Vinod Chopra
Vidhu Vinod Chopra (born September 5, 1952) is an Indian film director, screenwriter and producer. Parinda, 1942: A Love Story, Eklavya: The Royal Guard, Munna Bhai film series (Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. and Lage Raho Munna Bhai), 3 Idiots are some of his highly popular films. He is the founder of Vinod Chopra Films.
Early life
Chopra grew up in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India. His father was D. N. Chopra and veteran filmmaker Ramanand Sagar was his half-brother.
He is of Punjabi descent and his parents are originally from Peshawar. His love of Hindi cinema and support of his family encouraged him to study film direction. For this purpose, he went to Pune and studied film direction at the Film and Television Institute of India.
Career
Chopra's first student short, Murder at Monkey Hill, won the National Film Award for Best Short Experimental Film and the Guru Dutt Memorial Award for Best Student Film.
This was followed by a short documentary highlighting the plight of India's destitute children, called An Encounter with Faces, which was nominated for an Academy Award in the Documentary Short Subject category in 1979. It also won the Grand Prix at the Tampere Film Festival in 1980.