Zoya Akhtar: I make movies because I watch movies
Zoya Akhtar is no stranger to the world of international film festivals. The anthology film, Bombay Talkies, in which she directed one of the four segments, featured in Cannes Film Festival, 2013, as Gala Screening in the Tribute to India segment. Gully Boys premiered in Berlinale in 2019 and The Archies at the International Film Festival of India in 2023. Reema Kagti’s Superboys of Malegaon, produced by Akhtar, is currently having a great run in the festival circuit. After premiering in Toronto, it played in the Red Sea International Film Festival and is set to travel to Palm Springs in January 2025. Akhtar is also a board member of the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) that organises the Mumbai Film Festival. However, the recently concluded 21st Marrakech International Film Festival has been Akhtar’s first outing as a member of the jury. The Indian director-producer-writer had a quick word with CE on her experience, seeing a diverse set films and discussing them in the company of cinema giants and fellow jury members like filmmaker-writer and head of the jury Luca Guadagnino, actors Patricia Arquette, Andrew Garfield, Jacob Elordi, and filmmaker-writers Ali Abbasi and Santiago Mitre among others. Excerpts:
It's a first for you on a festival jury. How has the experience been so far?
Fantastic! It’s all new and fresh and I’m so excited. I am actually beginning to envy your job. I told Srishti [Behl Arya, film producer and Akhtar’s companion on the trip] how wonderful it must be! Wake up in the morning, shower and go and watch movies and then write your thoughts on them. And she was like, now you want to become a film critic.
For me it’s what I do on my day off. I watch films. So for me, this feels like a few days off in Marrakesh. It’s a wonderful feeling. Moreover it's an amazingly organized festival. I love Melita [Toscan du Plantier, festival director]. I've been here once before, so I feel very comfortable and warm.
Also, I'm ashamed to admit it, but I don't have access, and sometimes I don't really dip into films of the regions that I'm seeing in competition. I saw a film which is about a village near Somalia. I saw one documentary about a nomadic family from Mongolia. I saw a documentary on the revolution of the kids in Sudan. I've seen a film on Algerian immigrants in Paris. These are worlds that I don't normally dip into. Plus the jury is a banging bunch of people, so bright, so diverse, everybody's from a different place on the map.
So, I assume with an experience like this you’d be game to serve on more festival juries…
Happily. You meet people, you get diverse points of view. It's a treat to have Santiago Mitre and Luca Guadagnino and Ali Abbasi and, of course, all the actors sit there and give their perspective on a movie and break a film down. For me it’s heaven. I'm just listening and taking in how people look at different cultures and how they see a film. It's a lot of learning also. I would be happy to repeat this. I'd be happy if anyone gives me movies to watch. There's no complaining. I make movies because I watch movies. I’m an audience first. I love watching films.
Is there a downside to jury work at all?
I haven't experienced one yet. Perhaps sometimes you may not particularly like a piece of work, but you have to watch it. Maybe that could be a downside. Maybe, if you really like a lot of films but have to choose and pick one.
Is the way of looking at films, of filmmakers and film professionals, very different from that of the critics? Is there more of an empathy with which a filmmaker approaches the work of a fellow filmmaker? Or can you get brutal too?
I think empathetic people have empathy and brutal people are brutal. They are brutal with themselves and they're brutal with other films. I think that's a personality thing. I really go with what has moved me. Have I felt anything? It's very important for me to feel something, and it doesn't have to be anything sad, deep or profound. No, it can be the lightest thing, but it has to touch me in a warm way. So I just react to how I'm feeling. A hundred people could have liked a film, but it may not have worked for me. A film no one likes could work for me. I think it's your personality that also comes in along with the fact that you're a filmmaker, so you can spot a real, true moment that has been captured as opposed to a sham one.
You said you’ve been to Marrakech earlier…
We came here [in 2012] because the festival had an India tribute [to celebrate the centenary of Indian cinema]. Mr. [Amitabh] Bachchan was here, Shahrukh [Khan] was here. The whole industry was here. Karan [Johar] was here. They did a very beautiful tribute to Indian cinema, because people here love, love, love Hindi movies. And they played Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara [and other films] in the historic Jemaa el-Fna square. Abhay [Deol] was here, Kalki [Koechlin] was here. It was just glorious. They were going to play Gully Boys at the square this year, but it got cancelled.
And your own production Superboys of Malegaon is travelling to festivals around the world…
Reema [Kagti], Farhan [Akhtar] and all are leaving for the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah. I'm going to miss it. I'm going straight to Abu Dhabi for the recce for a commercial. I'm going to meet Reema there. We are working on something together, and then I head for Mumbai.
So what’re you working on currently?
We are writing our scripts. We are actually working on a bunch of things. Reema and me. We are writing a show, not for India. We are working on two scripts, one for her, one for me. And we are releasing two documentary series. We have one environmental documentary called Turtle Walker and another called In Transit, which is with Amazon Prime. It's a four-part series on the trans community in India. So, those are the things we are releasing and writing and developing.