12 - The Final Word: An Interview with Zoya Akhtar

Summary

Amber Shields: We wanted to start by learning a bit more about you and your development as a filmmaker. What experiences in your life influenced you to become a filmmaker?

Zoya Akhtar: It has to be my home. Both of my parents are from the film industry and are writers. When I was a child, my father was a working writer in the industry. My mother had been a child actress. She acted until she was 16 or 17 but stopped when she got pregnant and married. She had me at 19 and my brother at 21. When we turned about 8 or 9, my mother went to FTII [Film and Television Institute of India] to study and we used to go to Pune and spend the weekends with her. She had this huge collection of films and we watched movies with her and my dad. Basically, everything was about movies and the arts. My father is a writer and a poet so there would be a lot of poetry around as well as music, writers and actors. Every film was dissected and discussed. It was just part of our life. We loved the movies, but now I realise I was definitely looking at more than just the surface stuff. That was the biggest influence, as you end up loving movies. You realise that's what you are going to do and that’s what everyone in your family does. It's just something that came very naturally.

AS: So, by the time you went to New York University for a diploma in filmmaking, you were coming in with different experiences and degrees of exposure?

ZA: Totally. It wasn't just my background; it was also the fact that by the time I went to NYU I was 24/25 years old. I had started working in Bombay when I was 19 years old as a copywriter and then as an assistant in advertising. I got a job with Mira Nair when I was 21. I worked with Mira doing Kama Sutra (1996) and then I did a little indie film called Bombay Boys (Kaizad Gustad 1998). Only after I had assisted on two films did I go to New York. I had studied literature and sociology, so I had already graduated with a Bachelor of Arts.