Zoya Akhtar opines, "to make something original, you have to take your clothes off"

Zoya Akhtar is currently one of the most acclaimed directors in the Bollywood film Industry. Her most recent film, Gully Boy, managed to become a blockbuster hit and has also been nominated for the Best International Film Award in the upcoming Oscars. Zoya is known for her fantastic filmmaking and her passion for delivering a meaningful message through her films. One of her other recent works, Lust Stories, which made its premiere on Netflix last year, has also been recently nominated for an Emmy Award. Zoya was recently interviewed about her involvement in Lust Stories, and here is what the director had to say about the film and the topic of sex in India. 

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Zoya's take on originality for an Indian audience

Lust Stories tells the tale of a housemaid who has a sexual relationship with her employer, who later casts her away when he is visited by a potential bride parents. The anthology film delves into the topic of sex and the culture that surrounds it in India. In the interview, Zoya said that while she is interested in bringing in the feminine gaze into films, as she finds it important for India, she is also interested in bringing in the feminine perspective into her movies. She also adds that women are not the only one who are underrepresented. According to her, men are also badly represented and that it is difficult to be explicit about sex.

She connects her previous points to her film, Lust Stories. She states that there there is a lot of sex happening in India between people who would never be seen together in public. She talks about how the employer has an intimate relationship maid but never talks to her in public. She adds that in her opinion, sex is the honest part of this equation, as it is merely human nature, and it is the society that is the dishonest one, that is unnatural and bizarre.

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Zoya said that she is conscious of the fact that she is a part of a new generation and that Indian cinema is now changing. On this note, she says that each generation has different experiences. She mentions how Indian cinema has changed several times over the decades. She talks about how the '70s were a huge departure from the '60s and that '80s was another time of change, though she does add that to her most of the '80s and '90s was godawful. She says that the current era of Indian cinema is once again in a period of change.

Finally, in the end, Zoya was asked how she would make a perfect film and what that term meant to her. Zoya said that a perfect film was one where she had to change nothing. As for how to make a perfect film, she says that you need to expose yourself or you will end up being derivative. She ends by saying that to make something original, you have to take your clothes off. 

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