| Rajkumar Gupta is battling a nasty bout of flu when we speak to him. But he's keen to talk about Aamir, his directorial debut film about a middle class man coping with a difficult situation. | |||||||||||||||||||
| The stakes are high for Gupta especially as his film's lead actor, Rajeev Khandelwal, a TV artiste known for his infamous fallout with the czarina of Indian television, Ekta Kapoor, faces the camera for a Bollywood film for the very first time. "We are nervous as hell; it's not a big budget film but I have faith that everything will fall in place," says Gupta. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Gupta, whose parents are still aghast at his choice of career ("they're from Hazaribagh; you can't blame them for thinking in this fashion," he grins), says he's getting into direction at the right time. Having worked with Anurag Kashyap, Gupta says that in the last seven years of being in Bollywood he's seen the industry undergo a drastic change. | |||||||||||||||||||
| "There's been such a churning. With the corporatisation of the film industry, I found investors to not only make my film but also to release it." | |||||||||||||||||||
| Gupta could well be summing up the thoughts of other debutant directors who will release their films this year. "Audiences are suckers for good stories and as a director I obviously wanted to keep audiences hooked. Luckily, not just audiences, scriptwriters and directors, but producers too are thinking alike," says Neeraj Pandey, whose thriller, Wednesday, starring seasoned actors like Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher, is all set to release in May. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Wednesday is his first film but more than feeling nervous, Pandey is laughing at all the content he sees about his film on the Internet. "The whole world is calling it a story that's based on the Mumbai train blasts. On the contrary, it's a work of pure fiction sans the regular song-and-dance routine," he says. | |||||||||||||||||||
| For someone who's worked in television, the foray into films has been a natural extension. But Pandey, whose film has been jointly produced by his company, Friday Filmworks, and UTV, feels that he's selected a great time to launch himself as a director in the industry. | |||||||||||||||||||
| For the past two years, Bollywood, say experts, has been encouraging newer directors to come up and tell their stories. But what makes 2008 particularly different is that the number of new directors has risen significantly. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Companies like Pritish Nandy Communications, UTV and Yash Raj Films, to name just a few, are backing new talent, especially those in the directors' seat. In fact, 25 per cent of the films produced and released by Indian Film Company this year are made by rank newcomers. The company is producing films like Purani Jeans, Loot, Bubblegum and Fruit and Nut, all of them made by first-time directors. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Fruit and Nut marks the directorial debut of Kunal Vijayakar, a well known theatre artiste and TV anchor. Interestingly, the film will also see the debut of comedy king Cyrus Broacha who stars opposite Diya Mirza. To be released sometime in June 2008, Fruit and Nut is currently in post production. | |||||||||||||||||||
| "I simply had a conversation with the producers. I didn't have to wait for producers to give my project a nod; it was just a casual conversation after which the story was written, actors shortlisted and shooting began," says Vijayakar. | |||||||||||||||||||
| He admits that he'd like Fruit and Nut to do good business at the box office. "We've worked so hard, I've shouted and screamed my lungs out at everyone on the sets, got angry "" I really want it to succeed now," he says. | |||||||||||||||||||
| While directors might be nervous about their films, production houses and independent producers are confidently backing these debutants. There's Jugal Hansraj whose Roadside Romeo, produced by Yash Raj Films, will release in October 2008. | |||||||||||||||||||
Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor and Jaaved Jaffrey lend their voices to characters in this animation film written and directed by Hansraj, which is a venture where Yash Raj Films has partnered with Walt Disney. Hansraj says that it's a dream come true to work with the banner, especially since it had trusted a debutant to make its first animation film ever.
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| While there's no official statement on the budgets of these films, Roadside Romeo is touted to have cost Rs 35 crore. Even Tashan, a film made on a budget of Rs 40 crore, will mark the directorial debut of V K Acharya, a well known name in television circles and associated with serials like Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Acharya moved from TV to films in 2004 when he wrote the screenplay and dialogues for Yash Raj Films's Dhoom. Acharya also wrote the dialogues and screenplays for films like Pyaar Ke Side Effects, Dhoom 2 and Mani Ratnam's Guru. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Then there's Jaideep Sen, whose Krazzy 4 is garnering a lot of publicity already for its three item songs, two of which have been performed by Shah Rukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan. | |||||||||||||||||||
| A social satire, Krazzy 4 was narrated by Rakesh Roshan to Sen while he was assisting the veteran director on Krrish. A film buff, Sen has assisted top directors like Harry Baweja, Raj Kanwar and Subhash Ghai besides Roshan since 1990. But why such a long wait? "I was happy to go on learning," he says. | |||||||||||||||||||
| What's facilitating the debutant directors is the studios' faith in them. "We are already talking to some more newcomers who will add freshness to the sort of films that our production company brings out," says Sandeep Bhargava of the Indian Film Company. For now, audiences waiting to see these stories on the screen can only nod in agreement. | |||||||||||||||||||
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