Mumbai: Actress Soni Razdan on Tuesday shared a nostalgic collage that highlights two generations, juxtaposing a vintage photograph of herself with a recent shot of her superstar daughter, Alia Bhatt.

Taking to Instagram, Soni posted a series of images from her younger days, but it was the fourth picture that drew the most attention for her striking resemblance to Alia. The left side of the frame shows a young Soni in a classic pose, while the right features Alia in an elegant outfit adorned with embellishments. Captioning the post, Soni wrote: “Came across these blasts from the past.”

Soni Razdan married filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt in 1986 after meeting through a mutual friend. She is the mother of Alia and Shaheen Bhatt, and the stepmother of Pooja and Rahul Bhatt.

The mother-daughter duo’s project, 'Difficult Daughters', is being showcased at Busan’s Asian Project Market. Adapted from Manju Kapur’s acclaimed novel, the film spans two timelines. It tells the story of Virmati, the eldest of ten children in a traditional Punjabi household in 1940s Lahore, who defies societal norms to pursue education and love, only to become the second wife of a married professor. In 2022, her granddaughter Simar navigates a failing marriage and a secret affair, uncovering Virmati’s hidden past and confronting her estranged mother, Alia.

Speaking to 'Variety', Razdan said Kapur’s novel instantly evoked a visual reaction. “When I read the book many years ago, at that time it struck me as being very cinematically written. It is descriptive in a way that evokes the Inner landscape of the characters as well as the outer, actual canvas,” she said. “I found myself visualising the story long before I thought of making it into a film.”

She added that while the story is set during India’s struggle for independence, at its core it is deeply personal. “While a nation was on the verge of attaining its independence, we have a young girl fighting for the same rights... However, at its core, this film is a personal story, or rather stories that are set in two different time periods.”

On recreating the past, Razdan said, “1940s small town Amritsar in Punjab has to be recreated, but in parallel, the casting is key. So actors, costumes, and set design are the most important elements, particularly for 'Difficult Daughters. And last but not least, the music.... there is a huge opportunity here to be really out of the box in terms of how we go about marrying past and present”

IANS