Zoya seeks literary inspiration
The filmmaker feels there’s a lack of awareness about good Hindi authors, whose works are movie material
Hindi and other regional authors do not enjoy a lot of Bollywood attention when it comes to films based on literature, feels filmmaker Zoya Akhtar. “I think the marriage of their (Hindi authors) content and (film industry) storytellers and producers hasn’t happened yet. It’s sad but true. A lot of people don’t read to start with. They don’t even read the language they’re comfortable in. They’re not going to read translated works, and there’s no media around the Indian film industry that tells you about content from (regional) languages. So, when you don’t have information that they exist, you don’t end up discovering these,” the director said, on the sidelines of the fourth edition of the ‘Word To Screen Market’ 2019 by the Jio MAMI 21st Mumbai Film Festival.
Zoya felt, for these reasons, the concept of Word To Screen was “fantastic” because it brings stories to your doorstep saying, “dude you want stories? Here are stories from all over India!”
Asked about the genre of her choice, Zoya expressed, “For me, I think there has to be a narrative, a human story or a plot that keeps me going, or keeps me turning the page. If the world is something that can be visually interesting or beautiful, that is what attracts you. There are difficult worlds also, on which people have made films but that is the challenge.”
On the work front, Zoya Akhtar’s movie Gully Boy, starring Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt, has been recently selected as India’s official entry for the Oscars. Zoya said she is not fazed by the competition. “Even meeting people there, opens your mind in so many ways. It’s an amazing opportunity. The world’s getting smaller and we are a huge industry. We all are going to be out there at some point or the other,” Zoya said.
“Your country has selected you and now you have to go in there and give your best shot. You have to represent what your country stands for, what the film stands for and what it’s context is. You call it competition, I call it that club, where best from different countries are there,” she added.
The director said the aim is to hold as many screenings of the film as possible to familiarise the Academy voters with it. “You can’t make them like you but you have to be able to get yourself a chance to be liked. You can’t say, ‘vote for me’ but you have to say, ‘watch this’ and if they like it, they will vote for it. The thing is to get it watched,” she said, adding that her team is working on a strategy.