Before Ravi Jadhav's Banjo: Directors who successfully crossed over from regional cinema to Bollywood

Regional cinema is like the ugly cousin compared to the glitzy, glamorous Bollywood universe. However, some really interesting movies have been made in the regional languages, which transcend boundaries of languages and become popularall over the country. Take the recent Marathi movie Sairat, which was a blockbuster and along with the good word of mouth was seen by even the non-Marathi speaking audience.

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There are interesting directors with interesting stories to tell, who deserve the exposure a Bollywood film gets. We look at a few such directors who started off in regional cinema and then made the successful transition to Bollywood.

Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury
Pink's director has made movies like Antaheen, Anuranan for the Bengali audience and got tapped by fellow director Shoojit Sircar to make the movie starring Amitabh Bachchan and Taapsee Pannu. The cross-over was more than successful as the glowing reviews meant the film saw a steady increase in theatre occupancy over the weekend.

Mani Ratnam
The director was already a legend in Tamil cinema for films like Nayakan and revered across the country for his films like Roja, Bombay (which got dubbed in Hindi), however he made Dil Se in 1998 with the biggest superstar of that time Shah Rukh Khan. The film even though not a box office success, now has a cult following. And it meant he went on to make movies like Yuva and Guru which have very loyal fans.

Gautham Menon
The director struck gold with his very first film Minnale (Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein in Hindi) thanks to a charming performance from R Madhavan and some sensational music by Harris Jayaraj, lifting a done-to-death love triangle to a somewhat respectable film. The film was a huge success in both Tamil and Hindi. Menon later made Vinnaithandi Varuvaaya, which he remade in Hindi as Ek Deewana Tha.

Paresh Mokashi
The maker of Harishchandrachi Factory is all set to make his first Hindi film called Bhaykatha Heer Ranjha Ki, which sounds like a hilarious take on the epic romance of folklore Heer-Ranjha. After the unprecedented success of his first film, all eyes on Mokashi for his Bollywood debut.

Shankar
Maker of socially-charged movies fused with mind-boggling sci-fi elements, S Shankar made his one and only Hindi film in Anil Kapoor's Nayak, which holds the record for being the film to be telecast for the maximum times, by showing up every now and then on Sony Max. The film was a monster-hit, his recent movie have been getting dubbed for the Indian audience including Rajinikanth's Enthiran and the upcoming 2.0.

AR Murugadoss
Having made his debut with Surya-starrer Ghajini and then remade the blockbuster in Hindi with Aamir Khan. The film went on to be a monster-hit as a Hindi film too. Murugadoss, being hailed as Shankar's successor of making socially-relevant films recently made the Sonakshi Sinha-starrer Akira.

Priyadarshan
The Malayalam filmmaker made his Hindi debut almost a decade after he started making films with Jackie Shroff's Gardish which had admirable grit in a common's man fight against the system. He struck gold with Virasat starring Anil Kapoor and then with the crime caper Hera Pheri. He went on to make many movies by what came to be known as the Priyadarshan formula, however, he won a National award for 2008's Kanchivaram.