From assisting auteurs like Sanjay Leela Bhansali to helming his own decade-defining directorial projects, Vikramaditya Motwane has come a long way. Here’s a ranking of the Bollywood director and TV show(s) creator’s best works and a handy guide to stream them all.
Where to watch Vikramaditya Motwane’s movies and TV shows?
Most of Vikramaditya Motwane’s earlier films as a director are available to stream on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Jio Cinema, Alt Balaji, and ZEE5. As for his later works, most of them were exclusive to specific OTT platforms. So, while Jubilee is a Prime original, both Sacred Games and AK vs AK were exclusively released on Netflix.
The Films of Vikramaditya Motwane
After a tenure as assistant director on Bhansali’s romantic tragedies Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Devdas, Motwane tried his hand at penning scripts for the John Abraham-led football drama Goal and Anurag Kashyap’s psychedelic tragiromance Dev.D. However, it was with the dawn of the decade in 2010, when Motwane made his directorial debut with the coming-of-age tale Udaan.
Competing in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, Udaan opened to rave reviews and established Motwane as a new, rebellious voice of Bollywood. With memorable performances by newcomer Rajat Barmecha as a dreamy, poetry-writing teenager and serial actor-turned-Bollywood character actor Ronit Roy as his authoritarian, alcoholic father, Udaan struck an emotional note with young and old audiences alike.
But if there’s one thing that Motwane sticks to as a director - it’s not sticking to a particular genre. Hence, Udaan was followed by the period romantic drama Lootera, an Indian reimagining of author O. Henry’s melancholic short story The Last Leaf. Motwane experimented with more genres subsequently such as survival (Trapped), superhero (Bhavesh Joshi: Superhero), and mockumentary (AK vs AK).
Casting Harshvardhan Kapoor as a masked vigilante taking down corrupt Indian politicians in Bhavesh Joshi Superhero, Motwane succeeded in offering Bollywood a Batman-influenced superhero that exemplified a grassroots-level frustration at the current state of the nation.
In AK vs AK, Motwane interestingly paired Harshvardhan’s acting veteran father Anil Kapoor alongside his longtime friend and creative collaborator Anurag Kashyap. Delving into a fictional clash between the two AKs, the Netflix original satirised the true crime genre, petty celebrity fights, and the hullabaloo of the film industry as a whole.
The TV shows of Vikramaditya Motwane
Apart from cinema, Vikramaditya Motwane has also crafted some high-art television with the neo-noir Sacred Games and Jubilee, the love letter to vintage Bollywood. The former was co-created by him and Anurag Kashyap, featuring Saif Ali Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui as a cop and gangster engaging in a cat-and-mouse game that can annihilate the entirety of Mumbai. Jubilee, on the other hand, was poles apart with its focus being post-Independence cinema in the subcontinent. With era-accurate melodrama, Bollywood controversies drawn from real life, and Amit Trivedi’s nostalgic soundtrack, Jubilee was an instant hit for Prime Video.
Why is Udaan Vikramaditya Motwane’s best work?
Vikramaditya Motwane’s directorial debut still endures as his best work to watch, simply for its ability to tackle multiple themes and deliver on all fronts. At its core, Udaan is an exploration of a turbulent father-son relationship with both characters reflecting different shades of masculinity. But with Barmecha’s adolescent protagonist penning poems and reminiscing on his changing life throughout the narrative, Udaan is a poignant ode to the trivialities of everyday life itself. And Amit Trivedis’ rousing music for songs like Azadiyaan is still as fresh as it was in 2010.
