Kabir Khan: 'The Challenge Was To Recreate Emotions'

Interview / Kabir Khan, film director

- Pooja Biraia Jaiswal

Kabir Khan’s 83 seems to have pressed all the right buttons. Movie critics and cricket lovers alike are hailing the film as a remarkable recreation of India’s historic World Cup win of 1983. In a freewheeling chat, Khan talks about recreating the social and political milieu of that time, the challenges of casting the actors and his research for the film. Excerpts:

Q Expectations are very high from this film. Did you feel the pressure while making it?

A At the end of the day, it is a film that we were really excited to make because it is a fabulous, true and iconic story. So, it was a great responsibility to recreate that event, along with the physical transformation of the actors or the attempt to recreate the matches and the gear that was used.

But, more importantly, the challenge was to recreate the emotions that the country felt more than three decades ago. If we can bring even a fraction of that euphoria back into the theatres, then we have a winner.

Q Tell us about the rollercoaster of emotions that you went through.

A I often say that this is a film that has been blessed by the gods of cricket, because while we were shooting it, we had legends like Clive Lloyd, Gordon Greenidge, Sunil Gavaskar, Gundappa Viswanath and Jimmy Amarnath just strolling about on our sets and watching the shoot.