A slew of young, first-time directors are suddenly making it huge in Bollywood. When Farhan Akhtar made his debut almost 10 years ago with Dil Chahta Hai, he was a fresh change from experienced, big banner productions that stuck to the “formula” and came up with assembly line films with factory precision.
Meanwhile, older and more experienced directors are sporadically making films, that are not very successful anymore. For instance, Rakesh Roshan’s Kites and Mani Ratnam’s Raavan both bombed.
Producer Sanjay Gupta says, “We have a whole lot of young talented filmmakers wanting to unleash their passion on the screen. When Saarthak Dasgupta came to me with the subject of The Great Indian Butterfly and Sudipto Chattopadhyay with Pankh, I was thrilled with their out-of-the-box ideas. Take any theme, these newcomers aren’t afraid to embrace it, even if it’s the very antithesis of the Bollywood formula and sing-and-dance routines. Secondly, they were all made on minimal budgets. It was a win-win situation for us, as the films had done well at the film festivals and we had already covered our costs.”
Ritesh Sidhwani, says, “When Vijay Lalwani came to me with Karthik Calling Karthik, I was bowled over it. It was a fresh way of looking at a romantic film.”