THR India's 25 in 25: Why 'Dil Chahta Hai' Was The Birth of Coolth

Revisiting actor-filmmaker Farhan Akhtar's directorial debut Dil Chahta Hai in 2025 feels like returning to that precise moment when Hindi cinema first stopped pretending that youth lived only in song-and-dance fantasy and started listening to the way a generation actually talked, moved, and felt.

At its surface, Dil Chahta Hai is simple: three friends Akash, Sameer and Siddharth negotiate love, loyalties and the awkward economics of adulthood after college. But its brilliance lies in the nuance of these portrayals. Akash is brash yet vulnerable, Sameer charming yet insecure, and Siddharth quiet but emotionally complex. These characters are not archetypes, they are whole, flawed humans, and the audience sees themselves in the comedy, awkwardness, and heartbreak that punctuate their journeys.

Female characters Shalini (Preity Zinta), Pooja (Sonali Kulkarni), and Tara (Dimple Kapadia) exist as catalysts for growth, not merely prizes to be won, making the narrative feel emotionally balanced.

Ravi K. Chandran’s cinematography gives the film its dual heartbeat from sweeping Goa’s open skies and beaches with the same care it lends to cramped apartments and late-night rooftop confessions. Costume designer Arjun Bhasin fit the narrative with casual, urban clothing that grounded the characters in a lived reality.

If Dil Chahta Hai feels modern in 2025 it is because its music and sound design aged into the present. Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy’s score was a fresh mix of acoustics and rock that gave the film a vernacular that Hindi cinema had not owned before; songs were not just interruption but extension, and the soundtrack helped make “cool” feel native to Bollywood again.

The performances remain a key reason the film endures. Aamir Khan’s Akash is funny and restless, magnetic in his flaws; Saif Ali Khan’s Sameer finds humour in heartbreak; Akshaye Khanna’s Siddharth carries quiet disillusionment — each of them building a portrait not of heroes but of people trying to figure out love, loyalty and identity. Zinta, Kulkarni and Kapadia don’t just support; they ground, challenge, and complicate the men. Their roles are not just emotional counterpoints but emotional centres.

Farhan Akhtar on Making Dil Chahta Hai

Akhtar’s 2001 directorial debut wasn’t just a fresh voice; it was an unapologetic celebration of friendship, emotional confusion, and uncertainties of youth. He himself reflected years later in an interview with Times of India, “A film like Dil Chahta Hai happens rarely in a director’s life,” acknowledging the rare alchemy of timing, talent, and insight that made the film come together.

The film’s strength lies in its simplicity. Akhtar’s screenplay (which he has said reflected his own friendships and concerns) treats these men as whole people rather than archetypes; their flaws are comically intimate and, crucially, unromanticised. The result is a film that feels written from inside a particular social world rather than imposed upon it — an unusual stance for mainstream Indian cinema at the time.

In fact, even over two decades later, Dil Chahta Hai feels strangely recent. Its portrait of cosmopolitan anxiety continues to resonate in India’s ever evolving metropolises. The film is often credited with inaugurating a distinct “urban cinema,” not as a genre but as an ethos: films that engage the restlessness of the modern Indian self without apologising for its contradictions.

Consider the places the film mapped into collective memory. The Goa fort, once a backdrop, is now a pilgrimage for groups of friends; repeated shots — three friends walking down a road, gazing toward horizon — have become private rituals in public spaces. The film’s visual and narrative idioms have been quietly absorbed into the DNA of Indian cinematic vocabulary.

Culturally, Dil Chahta Hai changed Hindi cinema’s mainstream sensibilities. It proved a film could succeed without formulaic melodrama and long song and dance routines around trees. Awards and recognition followed. The film won multiple Filmfare awards and received peer acknowledgment for its craft, signalling mainstream acceptance for a style that was previously considered niche. More importantly, it legitimised experimentation for a generation of filmmakers, proving that narrative honesty could coexist with commercial success.