It is Zoya Akthar now, who after taking up direction, seems everything her younger brother promised to be and more…….Women bring a lot to movie biz. No matter what they say, they are sensitive to emotions and it always shows. Zoya Akthar has had an interesting line up as assistant to directors like Mira Nair, Mahesh Mathai and Dev Benegal among others. She ventured to direct her brother Farhan Akthar in her first film which also starred Konkona Sen Sharma, Juhi Chawla, Hrithik Roshan and a long list of actors.
The film, being about two people, a struggler played by Farhan and a starlet played by Konkona, both trying to make it to the industry. Farhan loved the script, my parents really liked it. They knew it was different, a little out of the box, but they liked it. That way it was exciting to give your scritp to your entire family to read adn you get great feedback…. which is perfect, claims Zoya.Perfect, it must be to have in-house geniuses but that has its own flip side. Sometimes, the familiar jokes shared among friends and family, make their way into the script and might not really click with the audience since they have no idea where these puns and punches are coming from.
“Luck By Chance has lots of true instances from the indsutry but there were times when we wanted to relate some instances onscreen, but didn’t because people would think it was a spoof ! It is so over the top that people would never beleive it actually happened,” says Zoya continuing, ” so we did without it. It is a thin line and I think I’ve walked cautiously.” Zoya with her Farhan like smile said, ” I don’t care what they say about my style as long as they come to the theatres and watch the film.” That anxiety is completely understandable for a debutant director, or any director for that matter, but somehow, to quite an extent both Farhan and Zoya were said to be celebrity kids with a twist.
” Farhan and I are film geeks, having lived on films all our lives. And thanks to our parents our association with films have been real strong,” she confesses. As kids, they enjoyed everything they saw, which included a generous dose of Hindi as well as foreign cinema. Though they hardly undrstood, they were present at many film discussions. Zoya used to be a Rishi Kapoor fan, she remembers. It was around ‘88 that she met Mira Nair and was totally crazy about Salaam Bombay when she was about 21-22 years. She has worked on a bunch of films mainly independent films like Bhopal Express, Bombay Boys. Her f irst mainstream commercial film was Dil Chahata Hai. By then Hindi films had got cool and she knew this was what she wanted to do!