Decoding Bollywood : Stories of 15 Film Directors
Some like Farah Khan and Zoya Akhtar had sterling antecedents but it took a tough childhood and intermittent assignments on film sets to win the box office with Om Shanti Om and Zindagi na milegi dobara, while Ashutosh Gowarikar auditioned for folk dances and failed with his debut film, lagaan created cinematic history and Anurag Basu had to first dance as a background extra and later overcome cancer to witness barfi win hearts and awards. These and other hitherto unfamiliar stories of directors belonging to the "100 crore club" like Rohit Shetty and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, the adventurous Kabir Khan and the maverick, Mahesh Bhatt take us through the unusual lives of 15 filmmakers of extraordinary films. Sonia Golani achieves the incredible by sitting each director down to candidly discuss the hype around the Oscars, the exclusivity of the "100 crore club", effect of corporatization and much more. Decoding Bollywood is more about demystifying the "world of Bollywood" than a mere decoding of 15 directors who have created benchmarks in their respective genres for generations to follow.
