Today, My Brother Nikhil has a cult following and Onir is a filmmaker of considerable repute in the industry. Yet, he feels he has a lot to prove with his next film ‘Sorry Bhai’. “This film is very different from my earlier two films. Bas Ek Pal was a very dark film. Sorry Bhai belongs to a different genre. It’s a romantic comedy, a genre which I feel is not very easy to handle,” says Onir.

‘Sorry Bhai’, which releases later this month has the director’s favourite Sanjay Suri as a part of an ensemble cast which includes names like Shabana Azmi, Boman Irani, Sharman Joshi and Chitrangadha Singh.

“It is about a guy who is irresistibly drawn to his brother’s fiancee. It tackles the concept of forbidden love in a contemporary, progressive manner,” says Onir. Very much like the way the gay relationship was treated in his debut film, My Brother Nihil. But wasn’t he afraid of being tagged as a “gay filmmaker’? “Not at all. All I wanted to do was make a film about relationships,” he says.

As sensitive as his handling of the gay relationship in the film was, Onir was not spared criticism. “People felt I played it safe by not showing any kind of physical intimacy between my characters. But my focus was on their rapport and the emotional bond they shared. Had I shown two guys kissing on screen, the film would have been in news for all the wrong reasons. Even in ‘Sorry Bhai’ I try and refrain from showing any sensational scene,” he states.