By Farah Bookwala Vhora Sept 27, 2019 12:55:30 PM IST (Updated)
For filmmaker Zoya Akhtar, 2019 has been larger than life. The 46-year old director is riding on a high after her Netflix film Lust Stories earned an Emmy nomination, followed by the box office hit Gully Boy, becoming the official entry from India for the Oscars 2020.
For filmmaker Zoya Akhtar, 2019 has been larger than life. The 46-year old director is riding on a high after her Netflix film Lust Stories earned an Emmy nomination, followed by the box office hit Gully Boy, a film about an underdog who makes it big in the world of rapping starring Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt, becoming the official entry from India for the Oscars 2020.
CNBC-TV18.com caught up with Akhtar on the sidelines of the MAMI Word to Screen Market 2019 in Mumbai to get her thoughts on the booming video streaming culture in India, making films for an evolving audience, and why regional works struggle to become successful on-screen adaptations.
Q. In 2019, you’ve broken the status quo not once but twice. On one hand, your Netflix series Lust Stories received an Emmys’ nomination. On the other, we’re seeing that more than a decade after a mainstream film like Lagaan made it to the Oscars, we have Gully Boy winning an official entry. What does that tell you about not just evolving tastes of Indian audiences but also the way Indian films and stories are being received worldwide?
Zoya: I think that suddenly there is a platform for our stories to be watched worldwide. I don't think that space was available earlier. Now you have platforms that allow you to bring a formula, that allow you to tell different stories, and allow you to tell them differently, to use a different syntax. So, all of that is bound to find an audience somewhere on the other side. It's a very, very good day to be in the film industry is all I can say.
Q. Sticking to Gully Boy and its journey to the Academy Awards, how did you go about making a mainstream film that will appeal to a larger audience while staying true to your vision? How much compromise did that involve?
Zoya: I think Gully Boy is like me. I'm born and bred in the Hindi film industry and I've got that commercial base, it's in my bones; I grew up on commercial cinema. But at the same time, because my mother (former actor Honey Irani) was studying films and my dad (Lyricist Javed Akhtar) is a poet, and they come from very different disciplines, there was a lot of literature and poetry in the house. We watched a lot of foreign films. So, I think there was always been an indie vibe and I’ve worked only on independent films till ‘Dil Chahta Hai’. So Gully Boy is a mix of commercial and independent and I think it has a kind of tone that comes very naturally to me.
Q. How has the advent of the streaming culture changed the process of writing and directing for films? Does that impact the process of writing?
Zoya: I think is unbelievable. (When you write for platforms), you are liberated, you don't have to pressure of the box office on your head, you don't have censorship, you don't have you don't have to cast necessarily big stars so you have to cater roles for them; it's liberating on many, many levels. You have no time bounds like TV where one episode has to be 22 minutes or 24 minutes; here one episode can be 25 minutes, the next one could be 30 minutes.
There's so much world content that people are watching that their palate is slowly changing. Suddenly you put your show out, and your show is next to ‘Powder’ and that show is next to ‘Mad Men’. So you're on a shelf with everyone and that way your audience will grow. You will consume and your work will be consumed.