EXCLUSIVE Interview! Vivek Agnihotri on The Vaccine War: ‘Nana Patekar is a tough actor, but on my sets he surrendered’

Like the way you could never ignore The Kashmir Files, in the same way you cannot ignore The Vaccine War. In an interview with Firstpost, Vivek Agnihotri spoke on the difficulties of making The Vaccine War, working with Nana Patekar and most importantly how some media houses promote fake news for their personal benefits.

Vivek Agnihotri’s lens not merely captured the chaos and despair; his film was a spotlight on the resilience of humanity, the spirit of innovation and the power of unity. In a world where countries struggled to find solutions, The Vaccine War showcased India’s remarkable journey from crisis to recovery. The best thing about The Vaccine War is that being India’s first bio-science film, a lot of time was spent on research and in trying to show the trials over mice and monkeys in NIV (National Institute of Virology) labs. There was no effort made by Agnihotri to glamorize the film. And that is a big plus point for a bio-science movie.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

You made the entire media look like a villain in The Vaccine War. Why did you do that?

No, not the entire media. Only certain groups of the media. In fact, the media played a very important role in subduing vaccine hesitancy.

Has media come to such a standard there is no difference between those frivolous content creators/ influencers and journalism?

Yes, it is true. Up. You see, most of the headlines, most of the click bates or headlines on social media. Sadly, now news is consumed through social media. Except for a few, I don’t think the new generation now reads the newspaper. Now everybody wants to sit from the comfort of their office and give lectures and make their own narratives. There is no on-ground reporting or talking to people to take interviews. I have also been a journalist and I am from Indian Institute of Mass communication, so I know how things work. But now what we get to see or read is not journalism. Whatever I write on social media, somebody tweets that and it becomes news. How is that journalism?

The hard work and the research that went behind making The Vaccine War… What was the process and method used by you?

The minute research was done at a micro level when the lockdown started., then we did the macro research. We didn’t stop at all and we worked 24/7. In fact, when my film The Kashmir Files was released, we were at the peak of our research and did all that time you were researching. And I was also promoting Kashmir Files. So you can say that almost three years went behind research.

I had brilliant actors for my film, who were very intelligent and great in their craft, so fifty percent of my job was done. They did a lot of practice under the supervision of the scientists.

And getting in touch with the scientists again, getting the whole community together for this special film that you’ve made, how difficult was it? It must have been a huge, tedious job getting them together, especially the scientists.

It was a tedious job. But then we like to make hard kinds of films, we like filmmaking, which is tough. But yes, it was difficult, but then, once the process started, then everybody got interested. We did a thorough research with ICMR. Everybody was thinking about death because of the virus, the virus which was killing you, and 9 months later there was a vaccine which saved us and gave us a new life. So this between death and life, the two things that’s important is discipline of science. Nobody knew that the discovery of this vaccine came under virology.

We also thought that this film can perhaps inspire the younger generation and create awareness like the way Aamir Khan’s Dangal made us aware about women wrestlers and their struggles. Before Dangal nobody took women wrestlers seriously, but now they get a lot of respect in the society.

And I am sure after watching Dangal, lots of young girls must have got inspired to join wrestling. Similarly, here, even if this film can inspire one dozen young kids to join virology. For me that is the true success of the film, The Vaccine War.  So, meeting these scientists was not so difficult but what they were telling us in their interviews to understand science was difficult. We had to read a lot of books to try and understand what they were trying to make us understand about the virus. As we warmed up, they realised what language we can understand. And we also started understanding a little bit of their language. It was a difficult process, but definitely very enriching and enlightening.

How did you manage to get Nana Patekar for the project?

Nana is a very tough actor to work with, and he interferes a lot. But on my set he surrendered to me completely. Never, not even once he asked me why, what? Whatever I told him he kept doing it and he enjoyed it thoroughly. He also enjoyed it, because I think for him also because I wanted to do justice to his craft. It was very challenging to remain so subdued and nuanced, you know, and yet look like a leader who’s leading an army of just a few scientists to save the lives of the entire population of India.

You know how Nana is not, he is not one of those elitist, sophisticated people, but here he had to be like a scientist and he did a great job. When Dr Balram Bhargava met him, he held his hands and had tears in his eyes.

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