Two women write and direct new Aamir Khan film which brings a touch of realistic police drama to the genre of song and dance.

Irna Qureshi talks to the star and director Reema Kagti

Tomorrow, Friday 30 November, sees the release of Aamir Khan's eagerly anticipated new movie, Talaash: The Answer Lies Within. The film, which also stars A-listers Rani Mukherjee and newly-wed Kareena Kapoor, sees the return of the suspense drama to Bollywood.

This genre is not only a rarity in the studios but also rarely commercially successful. In one of the world's most prolific film industries, the films that do best business at the box office tend to be all-singing, all-dancing romances, with plenty of glamorous foreign locations to boot. While Talaash features song, dance and deep emotion, it is being billed as the first suspense Hindi-language drama for almost 20 years.

Reema Kagti, the film's director is a self-confessed suspense film buff. After the release of her critically acclaimed directorial debut, Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd in 2007, Kagti failed to find another script which grabbed her attention, so she decided to create her own. She co-wrote the screenplay for Talaash with close friend Zoya Akhtar - daughter of lyricist Javed Akhtar, who was once part of a legendary Bollywood scriptwriting duo with Salim-Javed, and conceived such iconic films as Sholay, Deewar and Don.

Kagti explains that the female duo wanted to explore darker emotions in Talaash, since they both felt these were often neglected by Indian films. She says:

They're not really considered the stuff of commercial Indian films, but to us, as writers, that was the challenge and the attraction too. How do we take a story that touches on darker emotions like loss and pain and sadness, whilst making a film that is as engaging as any masala film, but also to translate it into something that will be successful?

With the film about to hit the big screen, audiences are being kept in suspense. Details about the plot remain a closely-guarded secret, although a number of song teasers have been made available on YouTube, offering tantalising glimpses of the cast.

rather than hanging the narrative and cutting to a song, I've tried to write the songs into my narrative and use them for taking the story or the suspense forward.

Talaash is co-produced by Excel Entertainment (the production house co-owned by Zoya's filmmaker brother, Farhan Akhtar) as well as Aamir Khan Productions, which is spearheaded by Bollywood's most versatile actor. Kagti first worked with Aamir Khan more than a decade earlier, as an assistant director on his film, Lagaan, which Aamir Khan also produced. The groundbreaking film went on to become only the third Indian one ever to be nominated for an Oscar. Kagti had written the lead role in Talaash with Aamir Khan in mind. And when she approached the actor with the script, Aamir Khan not only agreed to star in the film, he also offered to co-produce it. He said of his reaction:

It's important for me to follow my heart and I really liked the script for Talaash. When I read it, I couldn't predict what was going to happen. I found it really engaging, exciting and moving as well.

The fact is that I get attracted to different kinds of stories and as it turns out, often these stories are not what we particularly understand in the mainstream. But I love them and I want to do them. I'm fortunate that so far I've been successful and a lot of the risks that I've taken have turned out alright.

Aamir Khan celebrates 25 years as an actor in the Indian film industry next year. Yet this is only the second time he has stepped into the role of an upstanding police officer, a character which seems to be experiencing something of a renaissance in Indian cinema. But as the director explains, the cop in Talaash is as distinctive in Bollywood as the theme of the film:

In recent years, most of the big films with cop characters have tended to be in the action or comedy realm - that kind of masala film. But the cop in Talaash isn't this fantastic action hero figure but a real man, with real emotions and real problems. So even though there is a plethora of these cop characters, I think that my one will hopefully stand out.

Talaash, The Answer Lies Within, is released worldwide on 30 November 2012.