“Directors who have striking new stories to tell are today finding their voices because the creative climate in the Mumbai industry is changing. The audience is clamouring for fresh ideas and alternative treatments,” says veteran Assamese filmmaker Jahnu Barua, who garnered accolades and a more-than-decent commercial run for the offbeat Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Maara in 2005. Adds Barua: “When somebody like Anupam Kher backs a film and the film goes on to make an impact, even though only on a small section of the audience, it sets other producers thinking. It inspires them to try something different.”

Incidentally, Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Maara nearly never got made. Barua had the script with him for years – it was originally written many years ago for Doordarshan. When the national broadcaster bailed out, Barua toyed with the idea of shelving the project because there weren’t any takers for it until Kher chanced upon the screenplay. The industry has clearly undergone a sea change since then. The likes of Barua, Rituparno Ghosh, Nagesh Kukunoor, Anurag Kashyap and Rahul Dholakia, among others, can go wherever their creative spirit propels them.

One of the surprise hits of 2006, Dibakar Banerjee’s Khosla Ka Ghosla, lay in the cans for several years before it got into distribution. The rest is a fairy tale. Saket Chaudhary had to wait for two long years before he could get his Pyaar Ke Side Effects off the ground. When he did, it turned out to be an unqualified success. As lead actor Rahul Bose says, “The quality of the writing made all the difference.”

Good ideas and smart scripts still demand a degree of patience, but they do not go abegging. There is enough elbowroom in the industry today for a filmmaker like Kukunoor. In the wake of the rousing success of the Subhash Ghai-produced Iqbal, he went ahead with his next film (the wonderfully well made Dor) entirely on his own steam.

Ramesh Sharma, who co-directed the critically acclaimed television documentary, The Journalist and the Jihadi: The Murder of Daniel Pearl last year, provides a somewhat different perspective on the incipient Bollywood revolution: “The entrepreneur-filmmaker does exist, but only in the low-budget commercial filmmaking space. If you want wide distribution, you have to join hands with a big player.” That’s precisely what Barua and Chaudhary did. The former had his film distributed by Yashraj Films, no less. The latter had the support of Pritish Nandy.

Says Shahnaab Alam, executive producer of films like Sanjay Gadhvi’s Dhoom and Imtiaz Ali’s Socha Na Tha, debut films both: “The breed of filmmakers who refuse to let their vision be diluted and their scripts be tampered with is definitely growing. These filmmakers instinctively turn to like-minded producers rather than seeking to work with the big production houses.”

However, Alam, who has turned an independent producer with the upcoming cricket-themed film, Shoonya, Black Friday producer Arindam Mitra’s directorial debut, says: “If you go to a big studio set-up, there are obvious advantages by way of marketing and promotion.” Striking a balance between the spirit of independence and the need for aggressive marketing is indeed the challenge that many young Mumbai filmmakers are increasingly taking up.

It’s clear that it is no longer enough for a writer-director to be in love with his script. He must also have the same passion for the finished product. “The Maine Gandhi… experience taught me a key Bollywood lesson: promoting and marketing a film is just as important as making it,” says the internationally recognised Barua. Having grasped how the industry really works, he is now all set to announce a new pan-Indian Hindi film, “an unusual love story”, with mainstream Bollywood stars.

No less important than the rise of intrepid filmmakers who dare to soldier on with ‘risky’ ideas despite the odds is the emergence of producers with a creative orientation. Says Anish Ranjan, producer of films like Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar and Dansh: “What we are seeing today is probably a return of the studio system of yore, albeit in a new avatar.” In this scenario, says Anish, “the freedom of the director might, on the face of it, appear to get curbed a little, but that won’t be in a negative way. Filmmaking today is a far more collaborative, interactive process.” Anish’s partner in the production business is filmmaker Anubhav Sinha, maker of hits like Tum Bin… and Dus.

The studio model belongs as much to Indian cinema’s past as it does to Hollywood, where both the majors and the independents run their show on strictly professional, corporate lines. “Every Hollywood film made these days is tested for market response from all conceivable angles,” says management guru and film producer Arindam Chaudhuri. “It is not surprising, therefore, that at least 80 per cent of films produced in the US make money.” That filmmaking culture, he adds, is slowly seeping into India.

Chaudhuri feels that Hindi cinema is witnessing the sort of change that swept through the advertising industry a decade ago: “There was a time when people appended a woman’s body to an ad and called it creativity. Gradually creativity became better directed and got linked to result.”

Similarly, filmmakers, Chaudhuri suggests, are directing themselves towards audience satisfaction, fine-tuning their products to meet market requirements. Gone are the days when a director could complete a film and feel that his job was done. Says Chaudhuri, who has two unconventional films, Rituparno Ghosh’s Sunglass and Rajat Kapoor’s Mithya, ready for release: “If a quality product is marketed well, there is no reason why it won’t click commercially.”

Chaudhuri is producing Ghosh’s first English-language film, starring Amitabh Bachchan as a Shakespearean actor and Preity Zinta. While the new film, based on a Bengali play by Utpal Dutt, will be designed for international distribution, the producer is confident that it will work in the domestic circuit too because of the curiosity quotient – this will be Bachchan’s first English film. “I want to take Rituparno to the all-India masses,” he says. The Bengali market accepts his films. The Hindi audience hasn’t developed a taste for his cinema. But they will if we try hard enough.”

But not everybody in the Mumbai industry agrees that the picture is as rosy as it seems. Says director Madhur Bhandarkar: “As the creative force behind a film, you can have your say only when you become a brand name.”

Finding a producer for Chandni Bar, Bhandarkar points out, was a struggle. “I had to approach ten producers before I found one to fund the film,” he says. “I have a following. People watch my films, so life is a lot easier now.” Significantly, Bhandarkar produced his latest release, Traffic Signal, jointly with Percept Picture Company as part of a multiple-film deal.

Arindam Mitra may has his hands full at the moment – Black Friday is in theatres and his first film as director, Shoonya, premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in January – but he isn’t ready to buy into the theory that it is going to be smooth sailing as a rule for all filmmakers of his ilk. “The system,” he says, “is still loaded against the filmmaker. If you fail on the first attempt you may get a second chance. But if you fail a second time, that’s the end of the road for you.”

Be that as it may, more and more young filmmakers, armed as much with a pure idea as a clear business plan, are geared to hit the road less taken.