Bollywood movies are forgetting cinema’s essence
Bhavani Iyer is an Indian screenwriter known for crafting emotionally rich narratives. She made her screenwriting debut with Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ‘Black’ (2005), followed by ‘Guzaarish’ (2010). Over the years, she has written screenplays for acclaimed films like ‘Lootera’ (2013), ‘Raazi’ (2018), and ‘Sam Bahadur’ (2023). Beyond cinema, she has also contributed to Indian television, writing for series like ‘24’ (2013). In 2018, she published ‘Anon’, a novel depicting the Calcutta of the sixties and the seventies. Iyer is in Kathmandu to lead ‘Go Tell It On The Mountain’, a screenwriting workshop organised by Shikshya Foundation Nepal in collaboration with KathaSatha. In this conversation with the Post’s Anish Ghimire, Iyer discusses balancing poetic storytelling with commercial viability and working with directors like Sanjay Leela Bhansali.You often work on emotionally heavy stories. How do you balance poetic storytelling with commercial viability in Bollywood? I don’t think any wri...