While Bollywood doubled down on spectacle in the post-COVID era, director Mohit Suri made a radical choice: He wrote a love story no one wanted to make. Now, with “Saiyaara” starring newcomers Ahaan Panday and Aneet Padda, the filmmaker behind “Aashiqui 2” and “Ek Villain” is betting that romance can cut through the noise of exploding helicopters and pan-India blockbusters.
In “Saiyaara,” Ahaan Panday stars as Krish Kapoor, a rising musician whose raw talent and ambition set him on a collision course with the realities of the modern music industry. When Krish is introduced to Vaani (Aneet Padda), a gifted and principled songwriter, sparks fly – both creatively and personally. As their partnership deepens, so does their connection, blossoming into a romance that is as passionate as it is complicated.
“Post-COVID, everyone was making films with buildings blowing up and cars growing up and the larger than life, heroic films,” Suri tells Variety. “And suddenly I just realized that, what do I do in this where everyone is blowing up more and more cars and tanks and helicopters? What should I do that will stand out?”
Originally conceived as a potential “Aashiqui 3”- the continuation of the franchise that began in 1990 and resumed in 2013 with Suri at the helm – the project didn’t materialize with those producers, leaving Suri to proceed without backing.
The contrarian impulse struck while watching “The Romantics,” a Netflix documentary about Yash Raj Films’ legacy in Bollywood romantic cinema. Inspired by how the studio had previously revived romance when action dominated, Suri began crafting what would become “Saiyaara” – initially without a producer, star, or guarantee anyone would make it.
Industry veterans warned him off the project entirely. “Some filmmakers actually dissuaded me, telling me that no one’s going to make a youngster, newcomer or love story in this market, in this age where everything has become about the blockbuster, larger than life cinema,” Suri recalls. “So we wrote the film, never for it to be made.”
But fate intervened when Suri encountered Yash Raj Films‘ creative producer Sumana Ghosh. The company that pioneered Bollywood romance, led by chair and MD Aditya Chopra and CEO Akshaye Widhani, was actively seeking exactly what Suri had written. “From being told that nobody will make a love story, to the company that is known for love stories wanting to make one,” he reflects. “They read the script and said, ‘We’ve read so many, and this is the only one we want to make at the moment.’”
The project represents a return to the genre for Suri, whose romantic dramas “Awarapan,” “Aashiqui 2,” and “Ek Villain” helped define Bollywood’s contemporary love story template over the past two decades.
Central to “Saiyaara” is Suri’s belief in young performers’ emotional intelligence – a philosophy that shaped his casting of debutant Ahaan Panday and relative newcomer Aneet Padda (Prime Video’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry”). “We underestimate the emotional quotient that youth have actually,” he argues. “We tend to underestimate what the youth can understand today and how much they can feel. Why do we look down upon the youth? I don’t understand that.”
The casting process revealed how working with newcomers enhances his filmmaking approach. “These kids have actually taught me how people think at this age group, how you have to make these films,” Suri notes. “You don’t make them very structurally shot by shot, putting it together, it’s more like a clay thing. And when you start adjusting it according to how you think they are responding to it. How they are bending it, how its taking its normal curves. And then it’s a great architecture and becomes a great statue by itself.”
Age authenticity was crucial to the project’s vision. “If I cast an established person, then normally, most of them were above the age of 30, and I needed a certain amount of youth component – the script demanded falling in love the first time. I didn’t want to cheat the age.”
Known for integrating music seamlessly into narrative, Suri maintains his connection to youth culture through his soundtrack choices. For “Saiyaara,” he collaborated with Kashmiri indie artists Faheem Abdullah and Arslan Nizami, along with established names like Tanishk Bagchi.
“I purposely try to find that one new arrogant or maverick or distinct composer or singer who’s making a tune for himself,” Suri explains. The title track “Saiyaara” began as “Saiyya,” a song with “very female lyrics and high pitch,” which Suri and Bagchi transformed into its final form.
His approach to music discovery remains hands-on. “There’s a joke actually, in the city – want to call Mohit for a Bollywood party, there’s a chance he’ll not come, but just lie to him and say there’s a struggling music director with a great tune, and he will drive across the city to come and hear that tune in the night.”
Despite creating iconic romances over two decades, Suri dismisses concerns about living up to his previous work. “I’ve never been able to let legacy bother me. I wouldn’t have made 14 films in 20 years if I let legacy bother me,” he states. “The biggest pressure I have is to make a good film. I’m not about trying to compare it to anything else.”
Instead, he felt pressure to meet Yash Raj Films’ standards. “If there’s pressure to live up to, it was the kind of films they make that I have loved rather than my own films.”
When asked about contemporary youth expectations from love stories, Suri emphasizes emotional universality over technological change. “I think falling in love has not changed, but the heart still aches in the same place where it was with my father’s generation, my grandfather’s generation,” he observes. “The way of connecting might have changed, but what has not changed is the language of love.”
As Bollywood witnesses a recent resurgence of varied content succeeding at the box office, Suri’s timing with “Saiyaara” appears prescient. Whether audiences are ready to embrace romantic storytelling again remains to be seen, but the director’s conviction in the genre’s enduring appeal suggests confidence in love’s eternal relevance.
“I really wanted to make this film,” Suri concludes, “because after really long, I thought I put my voice into something that was very personal.”
“Saiyaara” is releasing theatrically worldwide on July 18.