Farhan Akhtar in the ring

Clocking 20 years in the industry, the actor-director talks about his sports drama ‘Toofan’ coinciding with Tokyo Olympics and the brutal beauty of boxing

Plan-A doesn’t always work out. And, it’s not always a bad thing. Director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Toofan, in which Farhan Akhtar plays boxer Aziz Ali, was slated to hit theatres last October, but the pandemic struck and circumstances changed. Written by Anjum Rajabali and Vijay Maurya, and based on an idea by Akhtar, the film has dropped on Amazon Prime Video a week before the beginning of the Tokyo Olympics. “This is a film about sports and we have a very promising contingent of athletes who are going to Tokyo, including nine boxers. They all did really well at the Asian Championships (in Dubai) and won a lot of medals,” says Akhtar during a Zoom call from his home in Mumbai.