Neeraj Pandey

Neeraj Pandey Biography

Neeraj Pandey is a versatile director of Bollywood who came to limelight with the critical and commercial success – A Wednesday. The movie fetched him the Indira Gandhi Award for Best First Film of a Director at National Film Awards - 2008. The movie also got best film and best screenplay awards at tar Screen awards and Best story and best dialogue awards at IIFA. He also received nomination for best director at Filmfare awards and Screen awards for the same movie. Film's script was inspired by the 11 July 2006 Mumbai train bombings, yet written in a unique way. The movie also received a Nomination at 2009 Asia Pacific Screen Awards at Queensland Australia.

The best moment of this movie was its unexpected climax for which the movie is remembered most. The movie also witnessed the comeback of two great theater/film artists of Indian screen together doing leading roles after a long time – Anupam Kher and Naseeruddin Shah. It was remade in Tamil as Unnaipol Oruvan and Telugu as Eeenadu where two leading actors from the south Mohanlal and Kamal Hassan reprised the roles played by Anupam Kher and Naseeruddin Shah respectively.  

He was born and brought up in a Bihari family in Kolkata. But he moved to Delhi where he did his education. He started his career working with Delhi-based 'Legacy Entertainment', a company from where he learnt the basics of film making. In 2000, he moved to Mumbai and started his career with ad films and documentaries. Later he formed a production company titled, Quarter Inch Productions to make ad films, movies and television programs. He debut Bollywood in 2008 with his own written script, A Wednesday. Then it took 5 long years to release his second movie in 2013 – Special 26. The movie starred Akshay Kumar and Kajal Aggarwal in the lead roles and was well appreciated by critics too. His upcoming projects are Bhitu – A Bengali movie and Aman ki Asha.

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Updated: January 23, 2014