Nikkhil Advani made his directing debut with the 2003 commercial success Kal Ho Naa Ho, starring Shah Rukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Preity Zinta. His latest series, The Revolutionaries, premieres globally on Amazon Prime Video on September 11 and adapts Sanjeev Sanyal's non-fiction book Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom.
Advani said his approach to filmmaking shifted after his early career path. "I think I was playing it safe when I was doing movies like Kal Ho Naa Ho or Salaam-e-Ishq, because I was working with A-listers and, in some way or the other, mitigating my risk as a storyteller," he told The National. After later films underperformed commercially, he said, he moved toward the stories he wanted to tell.
He turned to political and historical subjects with the 2013 thriller D-Day, starring Irrfan Khan and Rishi Kapoor, which received strong reviews. Advani later directed action films with John Abraham and moved into television series including Mumbai Diaries and Freedom at Midnight, which centered on negotiations preceding Indian independence and Partition.
The Revolutionaries stars Bhuvan Bam as Rash Behari Bose, Rohit Saraf as Sachindra Nath Sanyal, Gurfateh Pirzada as Bagha Jatin and Pratibha Ranta as Pratibha Lahiri. Advani said television's extended runtime allowed him greater depth with characters. "If you've seen the run times of my movies, you know I like juicing my stories up for as long as possible," he said.
Advani described his storytelling approach to the armed resistance fighters depicted in the series. "My job as a storyteller was to transport you into their world, make you stand with them and make you feel their helplessness at the injustice," he said. He acknowledged the later success of Gandhi's non-violence movement, saying "great things can be achieved with non-violence."
