The Kaamyaab director on finding his niche and voice, and gaining acceptance in the Hindi film industry
Kunal Guha (MUMBAI MIRROR; March 22, 2020)

His directorial debut Kaamyaab was widely appreciated by critics, but Hardik Mehta, who’s presently adding final touches to his next, an untitled horror comedy starring Rajkummar Rao and Jhanvi Kapoor, says “life hasn’t changed much since”.

Born in Rajkot and raised in Baroda, Mehta first made it to the entertainment pages in 2016 when his documentary Amdavad Ma Famous won the National Award for Best Non-Feature Film. Set against the backdrop of the biggest kite flying festival in India, the film follows an 11-year-old boy who chases kites. The docu was screened at many international film festivals. When we quiz him on his earliest introduction to the medium, Mehta points to his formative years when he sat through whatever played on TV at home — from family dramas to pot-boilers. “My father was a huge fan of Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Chatterjee, so I grew up watching all their films,” says the B-Tech in Dairy Technology from Anand.

A regular at theatre festivals during college, it took Mehta two years in a job with a dairy outfit in Surat to realise that he wasn’t “meant to be in the technical field”. He turned copywriter with a Baroda-based agency and decided to part with half his salary of Rs 6,000 to watch a new film every day. “I was a regular at this DVD library in Baroda, which had a surprisingly massive collection of world cinema,” says Mehta.

His passion for films further crystallised when he got through Jamia Millia Islamia for a post-graduation degree in film production. Mehta’s final year project impressed filmmaker Dev Benegal so much that he roped him in as a script continuity supervisor for Road, Movie, his 2010 film starring Abhay Deol. He later bagged a similar role with filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane, whom he assisted on Lootera (2013), worked as the production assistant on Queen (2014) and co-wrote the screenplay for Trapped (2017).

Mehta had written the first draft of Kaamyaab, which revolves around a veteran supporting actor returning to films for his 500th turn, back in 2014 — coincidentally around the time when Alejandro Iñárritu’s Birdman released. “The thematics of the films were very similar,” he says. “But Vikramaditya [Motwane] assured me that my story was more culturally appropriate for Indian cinema.”

The writer-director, who hopes to adopt the cinematic sensibilities of German filmmaker Werner Herzog and considers A Guide for the Perplexed: Conversations with Paul Cronin to be his bible, was certain about translating his story on the big screen. But many, including those he had worked with, felt he had to prove himself before helming a project. “That’s when I stumbled upon this boy in Ahmedabad who risked his life and limb to nab kites and felt it could turn into an interesting observation on film,” he says, alluding to his self-funded documentary which met wide acclaim at festivals. Looking back, he feels it “lacks finesse” and is visibly “a first-timer’s job”, but “that’s what makes it unique”.

Mehta also directed a short film called The Affair, inspired by couples who make out along the shores of Mumbai because they can’t afford privacy at home. Manish Mundra’s Drishyam Films included it in their catalogue, and even agreed to back Mehta’s feature proposal, Kaamyaab, with Sanjay Mishra in the lead role.

Today, Mehta is humbled by the critical response to his debut and feels that the only way to gain acceptance in an industry known to be singularly insular, is by “upping one’s game”. “If you have to learn swimming, you have to jump into the pool. If you have to be a writer, you have to stare at a blank page,” he says.

Despite the acclaim, however, Kaamyaab had a modest release over only 250 screens, thanks perhaps to the release of a massive action-thriller in the same week. But Mehta is certain that his film wouldn’t have made it to the screens at all if it hadn’t been backed by Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment. “It’s ironic that we needed a superstar to promote a film about character actors too, but that’s the world we live in,” he says.