Mumbai: The world is shrinking and one has to compete with the best, according to director Zoya Akhtar as she gears up for ‘Gully Boy’s’ Oscar campaign.
The film is about a budding Mumbai street rapper and is India’s official entry at the 92nd Academy Awards in the International Feature Film category. Zoya Akhtar said she is not fazed by the competition.
“Even meeting people there, opens your mind in so many ways. It’s an amazing opportunity. The world’s getting smaller and we are a huge industry. We all are going to be out there at some point or the other,” Zoya Akhtar stated.
“Your country has selected you and now you have to go in there and give your best shot. You have to represent what your country stands for, what the film stands for and what the context is. You call it competition, I call it that club, where best from different countries are there,” added the director.
The director said the aim is to hold as many screenings of the film as possible to familiarise the Academy voters with it. “You can’t make them like you but you have to be able to get yourself a chance to be liked. You can’t say, ‘vote for me’ but you have to say, ‘watch this’ and if they like it, they will vote for it. The thing is to get ‘Gully Boy’ watched,” Zoya further stated.
‘Gully Boy’, starring Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Sidhant Chaturvedi, Amruta Subhash, Vijay Raaz, Kalki Koechlin and Vijay Varma, was Zoya Akhtar’s attempt to look at the class system in India.
“It is a film about the class system, where we are functioning in a way where certain people are kind of trapped in it and find it difficult to break out. That is what the film is about, everything else is the backdrop,” Zoya informed.
There were reports that Zoya had bought the rights for Martin Scorsese’s gangster movies ‘The Departed’ and ‘Gangs of New York’ and had approached Ranveer Singh for the same. The director said there was no truth to the news.
“No, I don’t have the rights, someone else has it. (But) I am definitely looking for a gangster film. I am looking for a story. It is my favourite genre. Films like ‘Scarface’, ‘The Godfather’, ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘Casino’ are something I can watch again and again and from anywhere. I love them so I have to make one,” asserted Zoya.
PTI