China may be proving to be the biggest market for Indian films, but Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi director Mudassar Aziz could not care less. He believes the film would never release in China. “I am certain that it will be banned in China,” he says. And he has reasons to believe so.

A sequel to Happy Bhag Jayegi (2016), set in Pakistan, the new film is set in China. But they did not shoot much of it there. “I shot for six days in China with very few actors. China has a very strict production policy. You have to get into an Indo-Chinese co-production. If you are a solo production, they make things awfully difficult for you. And in case of a co-production, a script like Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi would never be approved by the board,” the director says, citing how shooting in China is financially unviable. “In any case, Pakistan also did not let us shoot there either. I had gone to Lahore alone and taken the shots that you see of the city on my own,” he recalls.

Aziz understands that bilateral ties with China have room for improvement and what better way to do it than humour!  “You may have seen in Happy Bhag Jayegi, I let the neighbours (Pakistan) laugh at us a bit while we laughed at them… The fact is that in 70 years we have not got anything out of the wars. Let’s try laughing a bit then. For all you know something might change!” he said.