Top 33 Zoya Akhtar Quotes

We were allowed to make mistakes. I mean that is a real privilege, to be able to go your own way, find your voice, just have a support system that allows you to do all that.

Films were always a passion for me but it was when I saw ‘Salaam Bombay‘ that I decided that it was film direction that I was interested in. That is when I decided I wanted to direct films.

As a filmmaker when you show your film to anybody, you want it to be liked. You want the reviews to be positive. After watching your film, you want people to feel good.

My biggest challenge was when I had my first panic attack at 27. It’s not something you can ignore, you can’t sit around and get sucked into a rabbit hole.

Well, everyone in my family is a writer. There is a big contribution on the script level by everyone.

At the end of my life, I want to have a body of work that has everything.

When you’re scoring music for a film, it has to be interwoven with the narrative, it has to reflect the mood, the ethos.

It is nice to be out there, amongst contemporaries on a global scale. You meet different people, see different things, meet different producers, eventually grow to collaborate in different ways. The world is getting smaller. It’s nice not to be insular.

I was an executive producer. I’ve done a lot of jobs and I think each one helps you get closer to what you want as a director. It also helps you – when you work with different filmmakers – to absorb, to adapt, to know what to watch out for, to know pitfalls.

I have to have a story I really want to tell, and then it makes sense to put things out there. So if you see, 2018 was again crazy for me. I did ‘Lust Stories’, ‘Made in Heaven‘ and ‘Gully Boy‘.

As film makers or any artiste that put work out there, what you are doing on your level is that you are putting consciousness out into the world.

See I think we are nervous about every movie before it’s release, irrespective of who has directed the movie.

Writing is my main interest; it is where my heart is. I always want to continue writing. Apart from that, I enjoy casting and hopefully want to direct too.

I like hip-hop personally. It is a genre I am very attached to and have been listening to all my life. But I have always engaged with foreign artistes, never with mainstream Indian hip-hop rap space.

I think there is nothing more important in forming a human being than your family. It is how you have been brought up and been taken care of that eventually is how you will deal with and treat the world.

As far as the theatrical experience is concerned, I will be highly disappointed if that goes away. I have grown up watching films in theatres so that community experience should never go.

As a director the first level of management is people. You have to deal with about 100 creative egos and make sure they subscribe to your vision and give you their best.

As cinema is a reflection of the world around us, with more women coming into the mainstream business, more women narratives will grab the limelight.

We are absolutely open to working with outside directors. But the criteria for working with outside directors would be the script they have, the kind of vision they have.

Some of my characters are drawn from people I know whereas others are an amalgamation of people or one specific person. Sometimes a character is simply fictional. It is always a mix.

I had a press conference and I fell down on stage! Because I was in a skirt, dude. And there was this genius on stage and someone told me please sit and I went to sit and he pulled the chair off from under me! I did my whole thing, after that, I was really upset.

I don’t really know a normal family. In fact, I don’t know a perfect person. So, how can a family be perfect and frankly if there are any, they will be very boring like I won‘t want them over for dinner.

The biggest piece is my family… From watching films like The Godfather on our dining room wall, to having a great relationship with my sibling. Or going on weekend trips with our cousins to the beach and eating all day… it’s been a crazy childhood; a ‘bohemian one’.

I come from a space where I wouldn’t say all, but most of the films have really shortchanged women. I don’t mean just the actresses, even just depicting us in that culture.

Because you don’t have opportunity to study, you don’t have opportunity to further yourself. And you kind of tend to believe your lot that this is what you have been given. I think on some level we have colonised people, our own people.

I feel blessed and lucky with my family, not because of the privilege, of course, I’m grateful for that as well that we never wanted anything.

I had an experience which I could not explain to myself and to others while I was on my way back from a south Mumbai party. It was near Haji Ali. All six of us who were travelling went through this. And this experience which I went through became the vital ingredient of the story of ‘Talaash’.

I want to make a period film, I want to make a film set in another country. I want to make a foreign film. I want to make everything eventually. I am a storyteller. I have many stories to tell.

Pieces of my life, no matter how scattered, are being stitched together and reflect in my work.

When you colonise someone’s dream, that’s the worst thing you can do.

I’ve grown up in the film industry and I’ve been watching them, analyzing them, laughing at them, totally understanding them and getting their point of view, and, at times, taking up for them. So I’m part of it and it’s part of me.

Freedom is a sentiment associated with the youth. It is rebellion. It is what you feel at that age, and it is very important.

When it comes to writing characters, whether men or women, I think a good writer writes good characters. I know many men who, for years, have written strong, progressive women characters.