Madhur Bhandarkar

26 Aug, 1968 | Maharashtra

Director/Actor/Producer

Biography

Madhur Bhandarkar is an Indian film director, script writer, and producer. He made his directorial debut with Trishakti and went on to direct several critically and commercially successful films. Madhur is a Maharashtrian Saraswat Brahmin family, who is a National Award winning Indian filmmaker and scriptwriter. He is best known for the films Chandni Bar (2002), Page 3 (2005), Traffic Signal (2007), Fashion (2008), Jail (2009) and Corporate 2 (2010). Career Madhur Bhandarkar ran a video cassette library in Khar, near Mumbai. This gave him access to a large collection of movies and he studied film-making through it. After trying his hand at production and various other stints including as an assistant to film director Ashok Gaikwad, Bhandarkar landed up as an assistant to Ram Gopal Varma. He even played a small role in his 1995 film Rangeela. In the same year, he made a pilot episode of a TV serial 'Apne Rang Hazaar' but did not find success. A couple of years later he made his directorial debut with Trishakti which took more than two years to make and was released in 1999. The film had a relatively low key cast and was largely ignored at the box office. After two years he directed Chandni Bar (2001) starring Tabu and Atul Kulkarni. The film attained critically acclaimed success, which took Bhandarkar into the top league of filmmakers in Bollywood. He received his first National Award for this film. This was followed by another critically acclaimed film, Satta (2003). Bhandarkar roped in Konkona Sen Sharma for his next film Page 3 (2005). The film did very well at the box office, was favoured by the critics, and made him a recipient of National Awards for the second time. His next release was Corporate (2006), exposing the dark side of business world followed by Traffic Signal (2007) which was again praised by the critics. The 54th National Film Awards Jury chose him for Best Director award for Traffic Signal, giving him his third National Film Award. 2008 saw the release of his film, Fashion which focused on the world of fashion, starring Priyanka Chopra , Kangana Ranaut and Mughda Godse in the lead roles. Madhur Bhandarkar is known for his socially relevant and hard-hitting films. Personal Bhandarkar is a great devoutee of the Hindu God Siddhivinayak and would walk barefeet from his residence in Khar to Prabhadevi on Tuesdays when in town. According to him, the film Corporate was his most difficult film as people in the corporate world would shun him after he bared page 3 culture in his earler film.   He took inspiration for the film Corporate from the Coke-Pepsi controversy. He is not even a graduate but he has been invited to deliver lectures on corporate issues to management students after his film Corporate. (Interview to TV channel IBN Lokmat on 26 November 2008). Bhandarkar married his girlfriend Renu Namboodiri-Bhandarkar on December 15, 2003 in Mumbai. They now have a daughter named Siddhi. Madhur is the life member of International film and Television Research Centre of Asian Academy of Film & Television,Noida. Directorial Style In most of his films Bhandarkar has made a woman the main protagonist. This has been seen in five of his films: Tabu in Chandni Bar, Raveena Tandon in Satta, Konkona Sen Sharma in Page 3, Bipasha Basu in Corporate, and Priyanka Chopra in Fashion. He also shows a gay character in his film Page 3, Traffic signal, Fashion, to name a few. Bhandarkar made a film named Jail. In that movie Nil Nitin Mukesh played the lead role. In an interview with Sanjay Ram of Businessofcinema.com he said "My movies are not exposes, maybe they just hold up a mirror to society. My movies are not judgmental; I just show what happens in our society, sometimes there could be a solution and sometimes there may be none. Life goes on". Controversy On July 2004, he was allegedly accused of casting couch and was filed for a big case when Preeti Jain went to court. She stated she slept with him from 1999 to 2004 as he promised her a role in a movie and marriage. On September 2005, Jain was arrested as she gave Rs. 70,000 to the underworld people to have him killed. However, in January 2006 the Versova Police Station had asked a magistrate at Railway Mobile Court in Andheri for the classification of the case against him as 'B' summary and dismiss it as during investigation police have found out that the complaint filed against Bhandarkar is false.