Sunny Deol, Ameesha Patel, and Amrish Puri starrer film 'Gadar: Ek Prem Katha' has completed 20 years of release. The film was released on 15 June 2001. On the anniversary of the film, shared some interesting information related to it with director Anil Sharma. Read what Sharma said in his own words…
It took a year and a half to complete the shooting of the film because Sunny Deol used to take a break of two months after every schedule to grow his beard. In that break, he used to shoot other films after being clean-shaven.
In those days there was an exodus of Kashmiri Pandits and I was developing a story about a boy from Kashmir and a girl from Pakistan. Dilip sahib and Dharam Ji had given their consent for this story. Meanwhile, writer Shaktimaan Ji told me a real story. Inspired by that, I dropped my idea and started working on this film and that's how 'Gadar' started.
When I narrated the story to Amrish Puri Ji, tears welled up in his eyes. He immediately agreed to it. We approached many big heroines of the industry for the role of Sakina but they all refused. Then we auditioned 400 new actresses and models out of which Ameesha Patel was shortlisted.
We had recreated the set of Pakistan in Lucknow. We had to show the steam engines of the time of the partition, which too was found with great difficulty. Similarly, VFX was not there in those days. In such a situation, a lot of time was spent collecting a crowd of 50 thousand in a scene.
People still consider the handpump uprooting scene as unreal. However, most of the applause fell on that scene. That scene was the hero's emotional outburst about his wife and child. When the hero pulled up the hand pump in a crowd of thousands, the screen became magic.
