Zoya Akhtar: Learning Every Job Before Directing

Zoya Akhtar's sets are known for large ensembles and precise detail, and her career shows why. She did casting, assisting and producing before she directed. This piece uses her published biography to trace that apprenticeship and the films that followed, including the ones critics did not like.

A filmmaking family

According to her Wikipedia biography, Akhtar was born on 14 October 1972 to the lyricist and screenwriter Javed Akhtar and the screenwriter Honey Irani. Her brother is the filmmaker and actor Farhan Akhtar, and her stepmother is the actress Shabana Azmi. She completed a diploma in filmmaking at NYU and assisted the directors Mira Nair, Tony Gerber and Dev Benegal.

The apprenticeship

She began as co-director of a music video for the rock band Pentagram, called Price of Bullets. She worked as a casting director on films including Split Wide Open (1999) and Dil Chahta Hai (2001), and as an assistant director on her brother's films Dil Chahta Hai and Lakshya (2004). She was executive producer on her friend Reema Kagti's Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. (2007).

Debut and breakthrough

Her directorial debut, Luck By Chance (2009), starring Farhan Akhtar and Konkona Sen Sharma, follows a struggling actor trying to break into the industry. It opened to widespread critical acclaim but performed underwhelmingly at the box office, and earned her the inaugural Filmfare Award for Best Debut Director, tied with Ayan Mukerji. Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011), with Hrithik Roshan, Farhan Akhtar, Abhay Deol, Katrina Kaif and Kalki Koechlin, grossed Rs 153 crore worldwide according to the biography and won her the Filmfare Award for Best Director.

Ensembles and anthologies

She co-wrote Talaash (2012) with Kagti, and contributed the Sheila Ki Jawaani segment to Bombay Talkies (2013), about a 12-year-old who idolises Katrina Kaif; the film was a commercial failure. Dil Dhadakne Do (2015), a comedy-drama about a dysfunctional Punjabi family with Anil Kapoor, Shefali Shah, Priyanka Chopra and Ranveer Singh, grossed Rs 144 crore.

With Kagti she founded the production company Tiger Baby Films in 2015.

Gully Boy

Gully Boy (2019), starring Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt and loosely based on the lives of Mumbai rappers Naezy and Divine, grossed Rs 238 crore and won a record 13 Filmfare Awards at the 65th ceremony. Akhtar's second Best Director win made her, the biography says, the only female director to win it twice.

Series, and a setback

With Kagti she created Made in Heaven (2019, 2023), a series about two wedding planners in New Delhi, and Dahaad (2023), a crime thriller that became the first Indian web series to premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it competed for the Berlinale Series Award.

Not everything worked. Her Ghost Stories segment (2020) received mixed-to-negative reviews, and her live-action film The Archies (2023) opened to negative reviews from critics and audiences. She has also been invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her segment in Lust Stories (2018), about a bachelor and his maid played by Neil Bhoopalam and Bhumi Pednekar, was reviewed positively.

What the record shows

Awards and grosses in the biography give one view of her work. The more telling detail is the order of her training: casting, assisting, producing, then directing. It is an unusual route for a director with her family name, and it helps explain her films' close attention to who is in each frame.

Sources

*Cover photo: Kevin Payravi, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).*