Mumbai, Sept. 5 -- Some filmmakers make films. Some create a signature. Meghna Gulzar has done something even more interesting, she has built a cinematic world that feels unmistakably her own. Across Raazi, Talvar and Sam Bahadur, Meghna has moved across genres and subjects but her storytelling has remained rooted in one thing: finding the human story inside something much bigger. She can take a headline and turn it into a layered drama, tackle deeply uncomfortable subjects without resorting to sensationalism, make a song carry an entire emotion and turn some of Bollywood's biggest stars into characters audiences completely forget are stars.

Now, with Daayra, directed by Meghna Gulzar and starring Kareena Kapoor Khan and Prithviraj Sukum...