Imaginary interview with Imtiaz Ali
by Charactorium · Imtiaz Ali (1971 — ?) · Performing Arts · Visual Arts · Culture · 6 min read
One monsoon night in Mumbai, in the offices of Window Seat Films, among piles of handwritten notebooks and a playlist playing on loop. Imtiaz Ali receives late, as always — he says his ideas only come after nightfall. He speaks slowly, a cup of chai gone cold in his hand.
—Before the sets and cameras, there was the stage. How did this passage through theater shape the filmmaker you became?
It all began in Delhi, in the old alleys, within the IPTA — those people who staged plays with almost nothing, except conviction. I think theater taught me one thing I never unlearned: the actor must inhabit the moment, not perform it. It's very different. When Kareena, when Ranbir or Alia are in front of me, I don't ask them to reproduce an emotion, I ask them to truly go through it, here, now. Delhi gave me that — its tiny stages, its endless rehearsals, that joyful poverty. Cinema came later, with its cranes and budgets. But deep down, every scene I shoot remains a small play where two beings search for each other in a closed room.
The actor must inhabit the moment, not perform it. It's very different.
—Jab We Met was born, they say, from a simple train journey. Do you remember that trip?
I was watching people. That's all I did in those trains of the north — between Shimla and those small lost stations around Bhatinda, along the railway lines. Strangers whose destinies brushed against each other for the length of a compartment, then were lost forever. And I thought: what if one doesn't get off? Geet was born there, in that clatter of rails. A woman who talks too much, who overflows with life, facing a man who is extinguished. Kareena embodied her with such generosity that she became, for a whole generation, more real than many living people. People still quote her lines to me on the street. A female role can become an icon, yes — but only if it starts in something as ordinary as a train ticket.
What if one doesn't get off? Geet was born there, in that clatter of rails.
—For Rockstar, they say the music came before the words. Why reverse the usual process like that?
Because music is not a backdrop in my films — it is the film. For Rockstar (2011), I had Jordan in mind before a single line of dialogue: a musician who must suffer to create, as if pain were the price of melody. So I did what is almost never done at Bollywood — I asked A.R. Rahman and Mohit Chauhan to compose before the shoot. I listened to their tracks on loop on my player, again and again, until the scene wrote itself around the note. When Rahman gives me a melody, I build the image around it, never the other way around. I was told it was madness, a backward method. Maybe. But Jordan could only be born from sound, not from the page.
Music is not a backdrop in my films — it is the film.
—This central place of music, where does it come from in you?
From very far, I think. Even before writing a scene, I need to hear its emotion. My notebooks are full of handwritten dialogues, but also song titles, musical references in the margins — an atmosphere note, a raga name. Film music circulates today well before the theatrical release, on platforms, in music launches that almost decide a film's fate. But for me it's not marketing: it's the raw material. With Pritam, with Rahman, I seek the emotional color of a sequence in a sound, then I write over it. A Sufi song, an electric guitar, and suddenly I see the character walking, hesitating, falling. Without this prior music, I would be blind.
—With Highway, you left the cities for remote roads. What were you looking for so far from the multiplexes?
I wanted to show the India that exists beyond the cities, beyond shopping malls and air-conditioned halls. The road, in Highway (2014), is a metaphor for the journey we all must take inside ourselves. We shot lightly, in motion, across Rajasthan, Himachal, Kashmir — a tiny crew, a road map of North India, and the randomness of landscapes. Even before shooting, I took Alia Bhatt on those roads for weeks. She was twenty years old. I think something shifted in her there, far from comfortable sets. A kidnapped woman who, paradoxically, discovers her freedom on the road — that's what I was looking for: to film a real country to tell an inner liberation.
The road is a metaphor for the journey we all must take inside ourselves.
—Physical travel recurs constantly in your films. Why does this motif of the road and the train obsess you?
Because nothing reveals a human being like movement. When you leave your station, you also leave the role you played at home. My films are almost always built around a journey — a train, a car, a map unfolded on the knees — because external movement forces internal movement. I named my company Window Seat Films for that reason: the seat by the window, where you watch the world go by while wondering who you are. The road trip film, that genre from elsewhere, I adapted to an India that has its own dusty roads, its country stations, its landscapes that crush the ego. You think you're going toward a place; you're always going toward yourself.
You think you're going toward a place; you're always going toward yourself.
—Urdu poetry and Sufi tradition surface everywhere in your work. What do you owe them?
Almost everything that matters. I grew up with the verses of Gulzar, of Faiz Ahmed Faiz — that Urdu poetry that speaks of love and loss without ever naming them plainly. Sufi music, that mystical tradition of all South Asia, celebrates divine love and human love in the same breath: it does not separate the sacred from desire. When I write a song for a film, that's where I draw from. Kashmir returns in my work as a leitmotif for that reason — torn beauty, impossible desire, paradise forever out of reach. My characters aren't really seeking the other: they seek, through the other, a transcendence. It's very Sufi, deep down, even when the film wears jeans and flies to Prague.
—You often repeat that your love stories aren't really about love. What do you mean?
I don't believe love stories are about two people falling in love. They are about two people finding themselves. Romance is just the vehicle. Look at Tamasha (2015): a man who has repressed his true nature to please his family, and a woman wakes him up — not so that he loves her, but so that he dares to be himself. The other is a mirror, a door. That's why my films rarely end with a simple kiss: they end with someone finally recognizing themselves. Sufi poetry already said this centuries ago — that the beloved is only a path toward oneself and toward the divine. I simply transposed that ancient idea into trains, roads, and contemporary songs.
Love stories are about two people finding themselves. Romance is just the vehicle.
—How do you concretely direct your actors on set, with this theatrical heritage?
I let the camera run longer than necessary. The official clap, for me, is not the end of truth but its beginning — it's often after the written line, in the awkward silence that follows, that the actor stops performing and starts living. I encourage improvisation between takes, I stay discreet, in jeans and t-shirt, mobile, almost invisible on my own set. The theater of Delhi taught me that: presence trumps performance. I don't want actors who show an emotion, I want beings who let it pass through them without controlling it. That's why I take my performers on location scouts, on the roads, before the shoot — so the body remembers the place before the camera demands it.
—A character like Geet escaped you to become a popular myth. How does it feel when a creation surpasses you like that?
A tenderness mixed with strangeness. I imagined Geet in the noise of a train, as a counter-note to an extinguished man — and now she belongs to people more than to me. People recite her lines to me at airports, they name girls after her. Jab We Met (2007) propelled me among the most sought-after filmmakers at Bollywood, but it's not the success that troubles me: it's seeing a character live her life without me. Kareena gave her a generosity I hadn't fully written. That's the mystery of the craft — you think you're making up stories, and sometimes you set free someone who then walks alone in the imagination of an entire country. A creator must accept that: what matters always ends up escaping us.
You think you're making up stories, and sometimes you set free someone who walks alone.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Imtiaz Ali's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.