Preity Zinta isn't pretending Batwara 1947 set the box office on fire. In her first comments since the film's release, the actor told Mid-Day that a shaky opening doesn't get to define whether she's proud of the work.

Batwara 1947 opened on August 14, right in the middle of Independence Day weekend, marking Zinta's return to the big screen after a long gap. Reviews landed somewhere between decent and mixed, and ticket sales never picked up the way a period drama with this cast and this subject probably needed to.

Zinta's response, when Mid-Day asked, was less about numbers and more about karma. "First of all, I am very proud of the film, and it's a very overwhelming experience," she said. "And as an actor, I am always managing expectations. Once I am working, I put in my 100 per cent. As I said earlier, I believe in karam (deed). You do your karam and then leave the rest to god. You can't control what happens. So, you work as hard as you can on every film. I give my 1000 per cent and then leave the rest to God."

That's a fairly standard line from an actor asked about a film that didn't land, but coming from Zinta, back on screen after years away, it reads more like acceptance than damage control.

Directed by Rajkumar Santoshi, Batwara 1947 is adapted from Asghar Wajahat's play Jis Lahore Nai Vekhya, O Jamya E Nai, and it's set in Lahore right after Partition. Sunny Deol plays the head of a Muslim refugee family handed a haveli in the city, only for the family to find an elderly Hindu woman, played by Shabana Azmi, still living there. What follows is about how the two of them work out a shared life in a house neither fully owns anymore.

The cast around Zinta, Deol and Azmi includes Ali Fazal, Karan Deol and Abhimanyu Singh, who plays the antagonist, Yaqoob Pehalwan. A.R. Rahman scored the music, Javed Akhtar wrote the lyrics, and Santosh Sivan shot it.

None of that heft translated into footfalls, and Zinta isn't disputing it. What she's disputing is the idea that it should change how she feels about the film itself.

She's already moved on to her next one. Zinta has spoken separately about pulling 16-18 hour shifts on Vibe, the Kunal Kemmu film whose trailer is now out, saying she skipped evenings out just to wrap and get back to her kids in America. Whether that one finds an audience is a question for whenever it actually releases.