Toronto International Film Festival’s CEO Cameron Bailey flipped a coin onstage, and actor Bobby Deol delivered his father Dharmendra’s evergreen line: Gabbar, mein aa raha hoon (Gabbar, I am coming). Along with director Ramesh Sippy, they kicked off the screening of the 4K restoration of Sholay, one of Indian cinema’s most iconic films. And with both Sholay and TIFF marking their 50th years in 2025, they were as well matched as, well, Jai and Veeru.
Also on stage that night was one of the prime movers behind the restoration: Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, director of the Mumbai-based Film Heritage Foundation. He signed on to the project during the Covid pandemic at the behest of Shehzad Sippy, Ramesh Sippy’s nephew, who had recently taken over as the head of Sippy Films. But Dungarpur soon realised he would need to start by first finding the material to be restored. In an interview with The New Indian Express in Toronto, Dungarpur recalled his quest for the camera negative. “We had a whole network of people to start looking for it, and they directed us to a godown space in the suburbs of Mumbai, where we found Sholay in sacks with no labels. The best way to restore is through the original camera negative, and when we opened it, we found that it was in terrible condition, and there was no other material. Then, Shehzad Sippy said there is some material in London. The film, you know, was shot on 30mm, and it was blown on to 70mm, and not a single 70mm print survives. It speaks volumes about our state of affairs when it comes to preservation.”
Dungarpur had his contacts at the British Film Institute send the material to a well-known film restoration laboratory in Bologna, Italy, where he often works to restore Indian films. He was rewarded for his dogged quest with a cinematic twist worthy of Sholay. He now had a couple of deleted scenes, and – imagine a climactic musical crescendo here – a different ending from the one that generations of moviegoers had seen. This turned out to be the original ending that Ramesh Sippy had wanted, but was forced to reshoot and change by the Indian government and censors. In the original version, the armless Thakur Baldev Singh manages to take his revenge on Gabbar Singh as vowed. But it was the Emergency, and the government didn’t want to show an ex-policeman taking the law into his own hands, even to eliminate a notorious bandit. The director was furious with the forced change, Dungarpur said: “At that time, Ramesh Sippy was very upset with his father. He wanted his name to be removed.”
Fifty years later, Sippy is getting his wish, with the restored version of Sholay slated for release later this year. Speaking to The New Indian Express, Sippy said, “That was the original ending as I had conceived it, and I think it was the right one. So it’s back, I’m happy.” Audiences in Toronto got to watch the new ending as well as the two deleted scenes, the first being an extended version of the killing of Ahmed, played by a young Sachin, and the second a sequence of Ramlal preparing his master’s hobnailed shoes for the final encounter with Gabbar Singh.
As the film played at Roy Thomson Hall, TIFF’s largest venue, a raucous audience cheered every character, every iconic line and song, with many clearly having seen the film several times. But restoring Gabbar’s menace, Radha’s melancholy, Basanti’s nonstop chatter, Jai and Veeru’s banter, the Thakur’s haughty air, the thundering hooves of the majestic horses, and much more was a labour of love for Dungarpur, spanning nearly three years. “What we are doing is we are bringing it back the way it was when it was released, not adding our interpretation, keeping in mind the director’s wishes. All through, Ramesh Sippy was consulted and spoken to. It is his film,” Dungarpur said.
Dungarpur set up the Film Heritage Foundation in 2014 and has restored several classics over the past decade. But he still laments the lack of awareness and motivation in the Indian film industry to preserve precious parts of its heritage. “Technology keeps changing, and the older stuff gets left behind. How much can anybody store?”
None of the actors or crew, except for director Ramesh Sippy, was able to travel to Toronto for Sholay’s screening at TIFF. But the lead actors have reflected on what the film meant to them. While Amitabh said, “Some things in life remain permanently etched in your mind. Sholay is one such film,” Dharmendra added, “Sholay is the 8th wonder of the world. So many scenes have gone down in the history of Indian cinema, and every character has become a star. But the real hero was the coin.” A fitting hero for Sholay, with its unique ability to win every which way.
