Vidhu Vinod Chopra started his career as production controller for Kundan Shah’s black comedy Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983) and lent his name to the protagonist played by Naseeruddin Shah.

Born and raised in Kashmir, Chopra studied at the DAV School in Srinagar. He joined the FTII and straightaway made waves with his Diploma film Murder at Monkey Hill (1977) which won a National Award and was later remade as his first feature film Sazaye Maut (1981). But before that he directed An Encounter with Faces (1978) which won an Oscar nomination for Short Subject Documentary.

His film Khamosh (1985) was a murder mystery set against the backdrop of a film shoot with actors Amol Palekar and Shabana Azmi playing themselves; while Naseeruddin Shah is an army officer who comes to investigate the case. It was penned by a team of writers including Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Kundan Shah and Sudhir Mishra.

But Chopra’s first major success was Parinda (1989) starring Anil Kapoor and Jackie Shroff as brothers torn apart by the cruel city. Using the best elements of Hindi film melodrama and the Hollywood crime thriller, he crafted a fascinating portrait of urban angst, filial love, human cruelty and the never-ending cycle of violence.

The success of the film allowed him to pursue his ambitious period piece 1942: A Love Story (1994), a story set against the backdrop of the freedom movement, which was immortalised by R.D. Burman’s last musical score—he died months before the film’s release.

Chopra made Kareeb (1998) which he dedicated to his new bride Anupama Chandra and went back to his native Kashmir for Mission Kashmir (2000). The story of a father-son conflict essayed by Sanjay Dutt and Hrithik Roshan, tried to voice the anguish of native Kashmiris forced to live in dread on their own land.

Eklavya: The Royal Guard (2007) starring Amitabh Bachchan, Saif Ali Khan and Sanjay Dutt wasn’t a success and his biggest success came with the two Munna Bhai films—Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003) and Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006)—directed by Raju Hirani, with Chopra as producer and co-writer. The adventures of a small-time goon (Sanjay Dutt) who gets a stab of conscience were riveting comedies that captured popular imagination, particularly the latter in which he starts having conversations with Mahatma Gandhi due to a chemical imbalance in his brain. Chopra also produced Pradeep Sarkar’s Parineeta (2005), a retelling of a Saratchandra Chatterjee story, which launched Vidya Balan’s career.

He is also the producer of the first film to have crossed the Rs. 300 crores collection mark. Raju Hirani’s 3 Idiots (2009) based on a novel by Chetan Bhagat remained at the top of the charts for a long time.

Chopra directed and produced his first English film, Broken Horses (2015), a remake of Parinda which received mixed reviews. He co-wrote and produced his next film Wazir (2016), a crime thriller film that tells the story of two unusual friends, a wheelchair-bound chess grandmaster (Amitabh Bachchan) and a grief-stricken ATS officer (Farhan Akhtar), who are brought together by a peculiar twist of fate.