Sanjay Khanna's career in film began with assisting internationally acclaimed filmmaker Shekhar Kapur in the fiction film 'Mr. India,' where he was in charge of the entire shoot from pre-production to post-production. Shekhar Kapur provided Sanjay Khanna an opportunity to direct 'Dushmani,' starring .. Read More
Sanjay Khanna's career in film began with assisting internationally acclaimed filmmaker Shekhar Kapur in the fiction film 'Mr. India,' where he was in charge of the entire shoot from pre-production to post-production. Shekhar Kapur provided Sanjay Khanna an opportunity to direct 'Dushmani,' starring Sunny Deol and Manisha Koirala while working on 'Bandit Queen.' Sanjay went on to work with Shekhar Kapur's Quasar Films as the COO and Associate Director for all of the commercials he created and directed. 'Force One Suv,' starring , was the most recent advertisement. Sanjay Khanna began his directorial career with his first picture, 'Anth,' which starred Suniel Shetty, Somy Ali, and Paresh Rawal and ironically (in Hindi, Anth translates to 'the end'). The film went on to win the year's Filmfare Award for 'Best Action Film' and a Silver Jubilee at the box office.
Sanjay Khanna's next film, 'Shastra,' is best known for the chart-topping song 'Kya Ada Kya Jalwe Tere Paro,' which remained at the top for nearly all charts a year. Sunidhi Chauhan, today's successful singer, and Yunus Sejawal, today's successful writer, debuted in this film. After that, he directed two films: 'Ittefaq,' an action-comedy, and 'Junoon,' a thriller. Sanjay Khanna has gone to try the quiet waters of the Small Screen, even though the Silver Screen has had enough of him. That's when he directed For Sahara One, a psychological thriller titled 'Katputtli,' a low-budget film aimed at digital theatres and the international market. Sanjay dabbled with television, directing hundreds of episodes for Star TV, Zee TV, Sony TV, and Sahara One.
He also directed a special show for Vikram Bhatt for Sony TV called 'Specials at 10: Shauhrat Nafrat Aur Showbiz,' which narrates about an aspiring Bollywood actress and her journey to stardom. This mini-series was nominated for the Seoul Festival's 'best series' category and won multiple TV Awards. Sanjay Khanna then worked as a Creative Director for Suniel Shetty's Popcorn Entertainment. He was responsible for the creative direction of all Popcorn Entertainment films and shooting songs for EMI starring Sanjay Dutt, Arjun Rampal, and Malaika Arora Khan. He even directed the action sequences for Govinda and Suniel Shetty's film 'Loot.' He subsequently went on to work as a Creative Director for Spectrum 7, a Dubai-based advertising agency, where he worked on several international advertising and corporate films.