Yesterday, I walked out of the theatre after watching Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Like so many of Nolan's films, it was a monumental theatrical experience. Not simply because of its breathtaking vision, scale, or originality. It was because of something much deeper. The film trusted my intelligence, curiosity, patience, and humanity. Every creative decision seemed to emerge from one unwavering commitment: serve the story.

And the most important decision in filmmaking is which story gets made. The future of Indian cinema will not be decided by how many films we make every year. It will be decided by which films we choose to make. It will be decided by the day producers begin to treat greenlighting not as a formality, not as a gamble, not as a star-driven decision, but as the most important creative and financial decision in the entire filmmaking process.

Gehraiyaan (2022) appears to be a sordid tale rife with steamy sex scenes and scandalous bouts of cheating. The story on inter-generational trauma we never knew we needed. Gehraiyaan was the right story…but not told with enough emotional clarity for the audience to travel the journey with the protagonist.