Rakesh Sharma

Rakesh Sharma's filmography is honestly kind of wild if you look at the range. You’ve got “Gully Boy,” which basically exploded onto the scene in 2019, all gritty and raw with Mumbai’s hip-hop underbelly front and center. People went nuts for Ranveer Singh’s performance, but Sharma’s involvement behind the scenes? Totally crucial, like the guy knows how to frame a city’s chaos in a way that feels almost poetic. And then, swinging in another direction, “Ishqiya” from 2010—now that’s a film drenched in dark humor and more twists than a plate of jalebis. The characters are messy, flawed, and you just can’t look away. Sharma’s touch makes the whole thing simmer with tension and sly wit. Jump to “Kesari,” another 2019 powerhouse, and suddenly you’re dropped into a historical battlefield. Think big, loud, and heroic, with Akshay Kumar leading the charge during the Battle of Saragarhi. There’s a sense of scale and intensity that’s hard to pull off, but Sharma’s got this knack for balancing the action with those quieter, punch-you-in-the-gut moments. Not a lot of filmmakers can hop genres like that and keep it feeling fresh, but he does. Whether it’s the pulsing streets of Mumbai, the dusty drama of rural Uttar Pradesh, or the blood-and-glory spectacle of colonial India, Sharma’s fingerprints are all over these movies—each one sharp, memorable, and totally different from the last.