Zoya Akhtar

“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.”

“To make a good film is an art. Gender is irrelevant when it comes to craft of filmmaking.”

“Every time you make a film you want to put something out there and that's important to me.”

“It is a part of us, film-makers and audiences; what we can't say with dialogues, we say with a song. We tell stories through songs, look at our folk cultures.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“But disco is the remedy for ghosts.”

“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.”

“I think actors get paid a lot and technicians don't get paid enough and I think that it should change because a good film, which is like a complete package, needs every single member of that team. I think we need to pay them more.”

“My evenings are usually spent eating cake with tea, which I should stop. Then I either hang with friends or watch something. I like my evenings free because that is when I get to spend time with myself, my dogs or with friends.”