Zoya Akhtar's directorial debut Luck by Chance (LBC) (2009) is not a glamorised view of the Hindi film industry. It is not the rose-tinted world of Om Shanti Om (Farah Khan 2007), in which love of the stars and the industry triumphs over all. Nor is it a world that openly welcomes and preserves bright-eyed innocence and ‘true love’ as in Rangeela (Ram Gopal Varma 1995). Instead, the film is a critical love letter to an industry that only one who knows it intimately can write, at once capturing the appeal of this enticing lover yet also the high price that this all-consuming relationship can cost.

A film about newcomers trying to make their way in an industry that is like (and in many cases, literally is) a family, LBC is an intimate portrayal by somebody who, having grown up in the industry, knows the good, the bad and all the nuances in between. The film opens with the complexities of loving an industry that is at once an intangible dream to millions across the world and yet is at the same time a daily reality that operates just as much in the mundane as the magical. While the opening shot shows the newcomer actor Sona (Konkona Sen Sharma) being seduced in more ways than one, as she is told by producer Satish (Alyy Khan) that he will make her dreams of becoming a star come true, the next sequence begins to pull back the curtains to expose the realities behind the scenes. Though capturing the ordinary by presenting a collage of snapshots of the real workers carrying out the day-to-day tasks that keep the facade of film going, this montage also lovingly hints at the magical. From the prop assistants to the tailors to the caterers, the unsung workers appear before the camera, immersed in their work without a moment to pause, but for once extracted from behind the scenes and put in the spotlight. There is a celebration of the joy and passion that go into making films, the familial bonds that those in the industry create in what is, if not their first, then at least their second home.