Hansal Mehta

Hansal Mehta makes the films other people decide are too difficult. Born in Mumbai in 1968 into a middle-class Gujarati family, he spent the 2000s directing work nobody particularly remembers, Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar, Yeh Kya Ho Raha Hai, Woodstock Villa, and then rebuilt himself completely.

Shahid in 2013 is where that started. A biographical film about Shahid Azmi, the human rights lawyer murdered in 2010, it won him the National Film Award for Best Direction and announced a filmmaker willing to go where the industry would not. Aligarh followed in 2016, about a professor suspended by his university for being gay, and premiered at the BFI London Film Festival.

Then Scam 1992 in 2020, co-directed with his son Jai, turned a story about a stockbroker into appointment viewing for an entire country and won him the Filmfare OTT Award for Best Director. It is still the benchmark Indian streaming keeps being measured against.

Directors do not usually get papped. He does now. Everything below is from our own cameras.

More on Hansal Mehta: en.wikipedia.org