Monday Nov 26 3:13 PM
Director Mira Nair is miffed with Abhishek Bachchan and she has good reason to be so. The director had approached the actor for a role in her short film on AIDs, as part of a project for the Gates Foundation. After committing his dates, Abhishek is believed to have backed out at the last minute.
Mira is naturally very upset and has spoken about it as well. The project is quite close to her heart as AIDs is not a topic that Indians speak much about. She wanted big stars for the film as that would grab people's attention. Quite a few of the stars who were approached, backed out, perhaps feeling that their market value would go down after starring in a film dealing with AIDs. But the good news is that quite a few other stars were more than willing to act in the film. Mira's film, 'Migration', stars Irfan Khan, Sameera Reddy and Shiney Ahuja. Mira has also commissioned three more directors, Vishal Bharadwaj, Farhan Akhtar and Santosh Sivan to each make short films on the subject. Of these, Farhan has managed to rope in Shabana Azmi and Boman Irani for his film. The entire segment, which is around 71 minutes long, was shown at the Toronto Film Festival. After that, it is currently being shown at the India International Film Festival being held in Goa.