‘Dil Chahta Hai’: Friendship is Really That Important
Farhan Akhtar on the film that changed Bollywood, the friends who inspired it, and where he imagines Akash, Sid, and Sameer 25 years later.
When Dil Chahta Hai came out on August 10, 2001, few knew what they were about to witness. It was director Farhan Akhtar’s first film. There were no evil parents, no class conflict. No, this was a movie about three friends — Akash, Sid, and Sameer — who were comfortably upper class and had the money for a Mercedes convertible, impromptu Goa trips, business class flights, and artist retreats.
For the first time in mainstream Hindi cinema, we felt the ache of friendships as they morph, as we grow up, as our circumstances change. While most Bollywood movies center romance, Dil Chahta Hai showed us a world where true love was what we shared with our closest friends, birthing an entire genre of friends-who-go-on-trips movies for the next two decades (Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Madgaon Express). For its 25th anniversary, we spoke to director Farhan Akhtar about why his debut film — which made over $8.4 million on a $1.7 million budget — continues to have such an impact.
“I don’t think I created a genre. That’s a little too egotistical and pompous for me to think,” Farhan Akhtar told The Juggernaut. Respectfully, we disagree.