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2004: Year of promising women directors
27th Dec 2004 19.56 IST
By Aparajita Ghosh

The biggest Bollywood hit of year 2004 came from a woman director. And the first Bollywood film on AIDS also came from an acclaimed female director.

In an industry that has been dominated for years by males, it takes self-confidence and perseverance for a female to make a hit movie or walk away with acclaim.

Farah Khan took a giant stride from choreographing to film direction with her movie Main Hoon Na , which became the biggest hit of the year. The Shah Rukh Khan starrer was Farah’s “tribute to great filmmakers like Nasir Hussain, Manmohan Desai and Yash Johar” whom she admired in her youth.

Farah is now well placed in tinsel town to start a promising career in film direction and has already started working on her next project, which – needless to say – will star SRK again.

If Farah ruled the box-office, another female director Revathy was lauded for making a touching film that raised the issue of AIDS.

The film Phir Milenge was not a good grosser at the box-office, but it was critically acclaimed for its open minded approach towards the issue of AIDS through a love story that featured Salman Khan , Abhishek Bachchan and Shilpa Shetty . Phir Milenge was also lauded by various AIDS awareness groups throughout the world.

However, success eluded other female directors like Aruna Raje and Pamela Rooks whose films Tum and ‘Dance Like a Man’, respectively, could not have a good run at the box-office.

One filmmaker (not from Bollywood) who really came to widespread notice was Pakistani director Sabiha Sumar whose film Khamosh Pani got grand praises by critics and won awards in film festivals world over.

Similarly, Pooja Bhatt continued making friends in Pakistan and premiered her film Rog at the Kara Film Festival in Karachi in December. This was Pooja’s second film to premiere at the Kara fest and she is looking forward to harness more and more talent from Pakistan in her coming movies.

Looking forward to year 2005, we can already see the rise of more promising women directors like Soni Razdan , who is currently making her first film Nazar, a supernatural thriller, with Pakistani actress Meera .

Farhan Akhtar’s sister Zoya Akhtar too is pulling up her sleeves to make a movie that will take a tongue-in-cheek look at the life behind the camera in Bollywood.

But before all this, we will see the release of another female director Leena Bajaj’s movie Shabd , starring Aishwarya Rai and Sanjay Dutt .