“Advertising Ushered In A New-Age Sensibility to Films” – Farhan Akhtar on the stylized slick of ‘Dil Chahta Hai’.

Today, ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ is remembered for changing the language of Hindi cinema. But Farhan Akhtar believes the transformation wasn’t limited to what audiences saw on screen. According to the filmmaker, the industry itself was undergoing a quiet shift, with professionals from the advertising world bringing a fresh, more organised way of making movies.

Speaking to The Juggernaut, Akhtar said, “There were new voices, new blood coming into the film industry. There were more executives with ad training (I too came from advertising), who helped professionalize film shoots. I was just really happy and lucky to be there when it happened.”

Akhtar, who made his directorial debut with ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ in 2001 after working in advertising, said the industry’s changing mindset was reflected in every aspect of the film, from its visual language to the way it was made.

For Akhtar, however, the biggest change was in the emotional and conversational tone of Hindi films. “The era introduced a new language, in the way characters spoke to each other and interacted with each other – the emotions weren’t melodramatic.”

Some choices went on to define the film’s look. B Blunt styled the cast, giving Aamir Khan his now-iconic goatee while Preity Zinta sported her signature curls. The team also embraced sync sound, allowing actors to perform scenes with live-recorded dialogue instead of dubbing later, a technique that added to the film’s naturalistic feel.

Looking back, Farhan Akhtar’s ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ stood apart through its contemporary dialogue, understated emotions, natural performances and slick visual language – creating a film that felt fresh, modern and deeply relatable to a generation of young Indians.