Filmmaker Rajiv Rai, best known for successes like Gupt, Mohra, Tridev and Vishwatma, is making a comeback after 21 years with his thriller Zora, which releases today. He spoke about the film its sequel Zoravar, the challenges he faced and more in an interview with us.
Rajiv Rai on Zora and its sequel Zoravar, “The second one will release three months later”; also speaks about doing the story, screenplay, direction, production, editing and distribution all by himself
Rajiv, you are back after 21 years
It feels like a Herculean task. I have done the story, screenplay. I’ve edited it. I’ve directed it. And I produced it. I don’t write dialogues. And I am distributing it. So, I’m playing all these roles, including the distributor, like my dad (the legendary Gulshan Rai), for the first time. So, I’m distributing for the first time. There are no buyers. So, I have to distribute it. I don’t have a choice. And then here I am with this film. I’ve done two. The second one will release three months hence. So, I won’t give it a gap more than two to three months.
Zora’s companion film Zoravar is ready?
Both are shot. Both are edited. It’s a small film. I have no advertising budget, zero. I’m not advertising it at all. There’s no fanfare. I’m not going around the world. I’m not looking at an international release. I’m not doing anything. I’m looking at a small audience. So, whereas a Kalki (2898 AD) would have, I don’t know, 12,000 shows, I’m having a minuscule release, like a very tiny one.
Is that what you wanted?
That’s how I want it. Because it’s got a new star cast. I don’t want to be running my film in empty halls, you know. So, I’m doing a strategy that I believe in. So, I’m a little like, my kid’s fine.
Why two parts?
I don’t call it part one, part two. I call one Zora and the other Zoravar. And it’s a continuation of a story. But Zora ends and the second one, they can be seen separately, but they are connected. And the beauty of the film is that they’re connected, severely connected and yet they are individual films. So I’ve done something very different and I have kind of worked very hard because I put myself in a situation where I told myself, ‘OK, Rajiv, now you’ve done everything and you’re making a film after 20 years. How would you like to do it?’
How did you want to do it?
I said to myself, ‘Let me go back to being 18’. And I closed my eyes and I told myself, OK, here’s my father giving me two crores of rupees in today’s time and saying, ‘Here, son, take it, make a film, burn it if you have to, but make a film.’ And nobody likes to burn money.
Burn money not in the literal sense?
Sorry for that. But when you say burn it on a film, that’s the term you use. If it doesn’t do well, you say he’s burned the money. So you think don’t think of making money. Think of making a film. So I put myself in a corner, gave myself an extremely small budget. If I may say so, the smallest budget that you can dream of or like I could say, it’s probably the lowest or the smallest budget film in today’s times made in Bollywood. If you look at it commercially, it’s still a big film in terms of visual. When you will see the film you will say, oh, my God, you did this in two or three crores. I don’t think the audience will believe me. I’m telling you that now I will sound like a liar. But the truth is, I’ve done it in a minuscule budget. I’ve shot it with four or five camera in the budget. I told my co-producer that, look, friend, don’t give me the equipment that everybody is using. I want to make a film with the basic equipment. I want to see whether I am capable of doing a film if I had nothing. Do I really have some talent or it is just make believe, you know?
That sounds like a really severe test
It’s like I’m climbing the Mount Everest. So I said, I know I can’t do this. But Mr. Rashid Rangrez, who’s worked with me in many, many, many areas with his wife, had the expertise and was my friend. So we joined hands. So here it is. I’m kind of producing it, directing it, editing it, story, screenplay and distributing it. So I’m kind of doing everything, but the rest of it is being done by Rashid, who’s probably done a lot more than me. We didn’t have a big unit. So my entire star cast in the first film must be under 30 lakhs of remuneration. So you can imagine.
Zora doesn’t look cheap
It has been done with a lot of passion, a lot of care with every shot. I’ve been there. I mean, I’ve been very, very sensitive to this idea of making this film in this way. So I’ve looked at every frame very, very carefully because I know things can look awkward or wrong. I’m trying to set an example. I think it’s the need of the hour. The need of the hour is just take a new talent, give 30, 40, 50 people a chance. So I have 32 people signed in my talent agency and make a film from your heart and soul. I am not here with folded hands saying, please see my film. No, you decide if you want to see the film, you decide. I wanted to feel what are the hardships and the pain a person goes through when he does not budget film.
And how did you manage it?
I mean, you stay in a two-star hotel, you know, you don’t have a umbrella overhead. There were no vanity vans, nothing. So everything I tried doing was to tell a story and put it all into the film. So it’s a murder mystery. It’s a suspense film. It’s a whodunit. I think it’s a very nice story. It’s a very complicated story.
But I’ve tried to simplify it as much as I could for people to understand it. There are people who may say, oh, this is not a Rajiv Rai film. But I’m telling you, it is not like anything like my past films at all. It has no lip-sync songs. It has a title song that has music. It has background music, lots of it. And Viju Shah has worked very, very hard. Also, the cameraman and also everybody who worked in me has worked very, very hard. You have to work hard. Otherwise, you can’t see a film like this through.
You can’t be complacent. You can’t say, oh, I have this actor. I’m going to get an opening. You can’t say, people are going to come to see the actor and forget about everything and then raise your budget because you have an actor. There was no way I could raise my budget because I have no saleability. Nobody’s bought my film. Nobody will buy my film. And I’m OK with that. So it’s on my risk. And I’m happy with that. The idea here is to do something totally out of the box, to do something totally different and to do something very, very honestly. And I thought, OK, how long am I going to live? This is the right time. So before I go, let me do something I’ve not done and let me try my best to set an example.
So I’m trying to set an example. I may fail miserably. Let me tell you, but I’m trying to set an example. And I told myself the need of the hour today for Bollywood is crash the budget, man. Get it down. Get it down to nothing. Otherwise, we are all in trouble. I got this in 2018. We are in 2025. So people are talking about it now. I was planned this in 2018. My script is registered 2018. So I’m not bullshitting. So I made a hard call that this is where the industry is going. This is what I need to do. And this is what not everybody needs to do .
What about the filmmakers who can’t think small?
I mean, I’m not saying this to a Karan Johar or Aditya Chopra or big filmmakers like Farhan Akhtar or even Sanjay Leela Bhansali or Rajkumar Hirani and there are many names. And they should make the film they enjoy making in the way they visualize their film and the way they would like to do it. But the rest of the people, 80 percent that are struggling and want their film to work. To show them, I just wanted to do this major kind of experiment. And I will continue doing this whether this film works or it doesn’t work. Say Zora doesn’t work. I will still continue doing this because I have really enjoyed it doing Zora and Zoravar.
More Pages: Zora Box Office Collection
BOLLYWOOD NEWS – LIVE UPDATES
Catch us for latest Bollywood News, New Bollywood Movies update, Box office collection, New Movies Release , Bollywood News Hindi, Entertainment News, Bollywood Live News Today & Upcoming Movies 2025 and stay updated with latest hindi movies only on Bollywood Hungama.