Raj Kapoor at 100: How Ranbir and the Kapoors Marked It
The Kapoor family met the Prime Minister and screened ten Raj Kapoor films in 40 cities for his centenary. What Ranbir and family said.
In December 2024 the Kapoor family marked the 100th birth anniversary of Raj Kapoor with a meeting with the Prime Minister and a three-day retrospective in cinemas. Ranbir Kapoor, the showman's grandson, was one of the voices behind it. The coverage shows a family using its history as a public event.
The meeting in Delhi
PTI reported on Dec. 10, 2024 that members of the family met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and invited him to the Raj Kapoor Film Festival. A source quoted by the agency named those present as Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Neetu Singh, Riddhima Kapoor Sahni, Aadar Jain, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Karisma Kapoor, Aarman Jain and his wife Anissa Malhotra, among others. The caption on the Commons photograph used with this article gives the date as Dec. 11, so the day differs by source.
The Prime Minister's office published its own account. It says Reema Kapoor, Raj Kapoor's daughter, thanked Modi and recited lines from a song from her father's films. Modi said the centenary symbolised the golden journey of Indian cinema, noting that the film Neel Kamal was made in 1947 and the country was now heading to 2047. He said Raj Kapoor had established India's soft power before the term existed, and urged the family to make a film for Central Asian audiences, where he said the showman still has admirers.
The retrospective
The Hindu reported that ten films would be screened across India from Dec. 13 to 15, the days around Raj Kapoor's birthday on Dec. 14. The list included Aag, Awaara, Shree 420, Sangam and Bobby, along with Barsaat, Jagte Raho, Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai, Mera Naam Joker and Ram Teri Ganga Maili.
The shows were scheduled in 40 cities and 135 cinemas operated by PVR-Inox and Cinepolis, with tickets priced at Rs 100, according to the organisers' press release as reported by the paper. The retrospective, titled Raj Kapoor 100, was presented by R.K. Films, the Film Heritage Foundation and the NFDC-National Film Archive of India.
What the family said
Ranbir Kapoor had announced the gala a month earlier at a session remembering his grandfather at the International Film Festival of India, The Hindu says. In the release he said, "Our generation stands on the shoulders of a giant whose films captured the spirit of their time and gave a voice to the common man over decades." He closed with, "See you at the movies!"
Randhir Kapoor, Raj Kapoor's eldest child, said the family wanted audiences to experience the magic again on the big screen. He described his father as a visionary who shaped the emotional landscape of Indian cinema.
Fame as inheritance
The Kapoor name has been in Hindi cinema for a century, and this episode shows its current generation managing that legacy. Alia Bhatt and Kareena Kapoor Khan appear in the list of family members who went to Delhi, so several members of the family's younger generation were at the same event as Ranbir.
Pricing the tickets at Rs 100 across all participating cinemas was framed by organisers as a way to make the celebration inclusive. Whether that brought new audiences is not something the coverage we read measures.
What we could not confirm
We could not find attendance or box-office figures for the three days, so we cannot say how the screenings performed. The two sources differ on the date of the Delhi meeting, Dec. 10 or 11. We did not read the Film Heritage Foundation page for details of restoration work. The guest list comes from an unnamed source quoted by PTI.
Sources
*Cover photo: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Wikimedia Commons, *[*https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poet,_Lyricist,_Writer_and_Director,_Shri_Gulzar_speaking_to_media_persons_in_connection_with_opening_ceremony_of_18th_International_Children’s_Film_festival_of_India_%28ICFFI%29.jpg*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poet,_Lyricist,_Writer_and_Director,_Shri_Gulzar_speaking_to_media_persons_in_connection_with_opening_ceremony_of_18th_International_Children’s_Film_festival_of_India_%28ICFFI%29.jpg)* (GODL-India).*