Hirani, Sircar's films close to Bimal Roy's: Boman Irani

Among the current generation of filmmakers, movies made by Rajkumar Hirani and Shoojit Sircar were closest to the kind made by legendary director Bimal Roy, says actor Boman Irani.

"Bimal da made socially relevant films, controversial films and people accepted them, while making them relevant and entertaining. There are 2-3 directors today that I'm extremely impressed with because they similarly make socially relevant films and make them entertaining. Rajkumar Hirani does that for us today," Boman said at an event to announce the "Bimal Roy Festival".

"It wasn't that you made an esoteric film that would go to festivals but no one understands it... the public used to relate to these films. Similarly, Hirani makes relevant subjects like education or humanity and kindness in the medical profession, it's absolutely stunning and he makes them so highly entertaining," he said.

"And my new favourite director Shoojit Sircar, I'm so happy with the kind of cinema he's approaching while making it successful," he said.

While Boman has acted in all of Hirani's films, portraying characters with grey shades in three of them, he heaped praise on Sircar's last film "Piku", terming it his favourite from last year.

He praised Sircar's style of depicting life, different people, love, and different types of death.

"Bimal da was a great voice in his time, Guru Dutt was a great voice in his time, and I feel these gentlemen have absolutely something. It's very important to talk about our society and there are people like Shoojit Sircar and Rajkumar Hirani, who're talking about the society. They don't have to be burning topics, it could be the way we live our lives today or the idiom of love today," he added.

Boman recounted the experience of watching Roy's films on Doordarshan during his childhood and getting influenced especially by "Do Bigha Zamin" and Balraj Sahni's performance.