~At Rajnigandha Presents Jagran Film Festival, Imtiaz Ali reveals how tiny creative details in his films carry deeper meaning, from the colours in Tamasha to Jordan’s costumes in Rockstar ~
New Delhi, 26 August 2026: At Rajnigandha Presents Jagran Film Festival, the world’s largest travelling film festival, acclaimed filmmaker Imtiaz Ali offered a fascinating glimpse into the intricate details that go into his films, revealing how seemingly small creative choices can become visual codes that audiences decode much later. In a conversation around his upcoming project Main Vaapas Aaunga, Ali spoke about the joy of creating films with collaborators who obsess over every detail just as much as he does.
Reflecting on the visual language of Tamasha, a panelist pointed out the symbolism in the iconic Agar Tum Saath consequence, where Ved is dressed in grey while Tara wears red representing the brain and the heart respectively. Responding to the observation, Imtiaz Ali attributed the idea to costume designer and stylist
Imtiaz Ali responded, “This might have come from Aki Narula, who was the costume designer. But we do this. We are the groupies of our films. There are a lot of such people. It's fun to work with such people. We are the groupies of our films. We talk to each other. This is just a time pass. The shooting of the film is over. People have gone to their hotels. We sit and talk. There are a lot of such things in it. We say, let's do this, let's do that. This is going to be crazy. People won't understand. We will understand. But ultimately, people do understand,” he said. Imtiaz Ali drew a similar parallel with Rockstar, explaining how costumes became a storytelling device, with Jordan’s clothes acting as a visual code for where he is in his life as the film moves across different timelines. “Rockstar, if you look at the costume of the guy, at any point of time, it's a code for where he is in life,” he explained, adding that the film’s intercuts made these visual markers particularly important in helping audiences identify where they were in the story. For Ali, these details were simply part of the joy of filmmaking ideas the team could obsess over because they loved the world they were creating. “So we sat down, we enjoyed this. This is why we made films. So it comes through. I thought people wouldn't understand. But ultimately, everything, people actually come back and say, this is what happened,” Ali said, adding that social media has further amplified the way audiences discover and share such hidden details. “Because if you find something exciting, it spreads quickly on social media. And if there are takers for it, then it spreads even more.”
The conversation offered a peek into Ali’s distinctive filmmaking process where costumes, colours and seemingly incidental details can become part of a larger cinematic language, waiting for audiences to discover and interpret long after the film has been released.
