Starting out in a Marathi classic’s Bollywood remake and now collaborating with Telugu star Junior NTR for his upcoming action drama Devara, Jahnvi Kapoor has been finding her space as a mainstream Hindi actress. Here’s a list of all her movies so far, ranked according to their watchability and mentioned along with the streaming services where they are available.
What was Jahnvi Kapoor’s debut movie?
With producer Boney Kapoor as her father and late actress Sridevi as mother, Janhvi Kapoor predictably joined the trade of her parents. While subjected to criticism of being a “nepo baby”, Kapoor has time and again explicitly talked about the privileges that she has had as an actress but how she wishes to give her best to the opportunity that she has been gifted with.
Her commitment to standing out in contemporary Bollywood was evident from her promising screen debut in Dhadak. A remake of the Marathi social drama/romance Sairat (which you can watch on ZEE5), Dhadak cannot match the legacy of its predecessor but it still deserves praise for navigating a particularly tragic love story evoked with ample empathy by Kapoor and her co-star Ishaan Khatter.
Jahnvi Kapoor and South Indian remakes
Dhadak is the first but not the last remake in Kapoor’s career as she went on to dabble in many other remakes from other non-Hindi film industries. Most of these included female-led dramas that allowed Kapoor to step out of mainstream conventions and showcase further intensity. You can watch the best of her acting in the dark comedy of errors Good Luck Jerry (a remake of Nelson’s Tamil-language crime caper Kolamaavu) and the survival thriller Mili (a Mathukutty Xavier-directed remake of his own Malayalam thriller Helen).
Mili, in particular, drew her acclaim even if it failed at the box office. For her performance as a restaurant worker trapped in a storage freezer, Kapoor garnered a Filmfare nomination for Best Actress.
A Brief Tryst with Horror
Despite contrary belief, Kapoor hasn’t always acted in dramas and romances. While a recent venture like the critically-panned rom-com Bawaal makes for an absurd watch, her experiments with horror are slightly more interesting. A shadow of Mili can be felt in her sophomore feature Ghost Stories. A Netflix anthology film helmed by some of the best modern Bollywood directors, Kapoor featured in Zoya Akhtar’s opening chapter that followed her escaping the clutches of what seems like a haunted house.
Kapoor later joined Dinesh Vijan’s Horror Comedy Universe playing the titular antiheroine in Roohi. A sequel to Raj and DK’s horror comedy Stree, Roohi featured her as a supernaturally possessed bride. Sharing screen space with character actors like hero Rajkumar Rao and his goofy sidekick Varun Sharma diversified her acting resumé.
Why is Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl Janhvi Kapoor’s best movie?
A biographical account of the titular fighter pilot, Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl addressed the trials and tribulations of women flying officers in the Indian Air Force. While the Netflix release has its fair share of melodramatic emotionality, Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl hits the right notes thanks to Saxena’s committed performance as an inspirational underdog. Complementing her Filmfare-nominated leading turn is the very talented Pankaj Tripathi who plays her on-screen father.
Where can you stream Jahnvi Kapoor’s filmography?
While Gunjan Saxena and Ghost Stories are distributed as Netflix originals, her other films like Roohi and Mili can also be streamed in the same OTT platform. ZEE5 and Prime Video can be other places to watch the rest of her filmography.
