Hitler. It's Meghna Gulzar's other name. Not that there is any resemblance to the German dictator. Gulzar, fair-skinned and light-eyed, is a face that might have launched a thousand films. Except that she chose to crack the whip from behind the camera instead. Hence Hitler.

Gulzar's debut film Filhal releases this month. The slick promos and soulful music are generating great expectations. Trade buzz is hot. The film-its subject is surrogate motherhood-promises to be genuinely "hatke", that is different. "It's a candid, intimate film," says Gulzar. "Hindi cinema has explored only a few emotions-revenge, hate, anger, love. But why not the pinks and grays and everything else in between?" she asks.

FARHAN AKHTAR Big release: Dil Chahta Hai Hatke factor: The colloquial dialogues and wacky humour made it an urban hit.

Gulzar isn't the only one pushing the envelope. Through the 1990s, the first generation of twenty-something directors-Sooraj Barjatya, Aditya Chopra, Karan Johar-rewrote the rules. Ironically, the rebels broke the mould only to cast it in a more traditional straitjacket. Now, the next wave of young turks is wielding the camera. They are high on attitude, low on cliches and eager to stand the Bollywood formula on its head. Innovative and spirited, they are struggling to break free from the feel-good family formula and create a new mainstream vocabulary.

"Hum hain naye, andaaz kyun ho purana (If we are young, why should our attitude be old)?" sang the boys in Dil Chahta Hai (DCH). Exactly. So Farhan Akhtar's energetic, eccentric debut film was a paean not to family or romance, but friendship. Colloquial dialogue, minimal posturing and a wacky sense of humour gave DCH an urbane sensibility rarely seen on screen. Critics swooned as did audiences, at least in the bigger cities. And Akhtar, 27, became hot property. But being accepted by the fossilised trade establishment hasn't tempered Akhtar's sensibility-he remains impossibly cocky and always irreverent. The grapevine has it that he recently refused to make a Pepsi commercial because the multinational didn't give him enough creative freedom. Akhtar won't comment on the ad but insists that his work must offer "my take on life". "I must add some Farhan Akhtarism to it."

Anurag Kashyap is equally unyielding. Which is why the 25-year-old director has spent the past six months battling the Censor Board. Kashyap, best known for co-writing Satya, made his directorial debut with Paanch, a vicious, violent look at urban youth embroiled in crime which made the Censor Board call for an outright ban. After a distraught Kashyap made minor visual cuts and major dialogue cuts, Paanch was cleared in November 2001. Kashyap's cinema is extreme and innovative. And despite the trauma of his battle with the censors, Kashyap isn't planning to curb his instincts. His second film is going to be "a radical story" about college politics and underground societies.

MEGHNA GULZAR (second from left) Big release: Filhal Hatke factor: The intimate film on surrogate motherhood is as candid as it is sensitive.

These films are polar opposites from the western gloss-desi soul prescription perfected by the Barjatya-Chopra-Johar triumvirate and followed by legions of lesser clones. The genre might be the same-DCH is a romantic comedy-but the perspective is unique. Gulzar, 28, who trained under her father, director-lyricist Gulzar, and auteur Saeed Mirza, strived for a simple, grounded film. And while her actresses might have significant roles-Sushmita Sen says she did the role because she "could portray a woman of substance"-Filhal is no feminist drama. "I've done justice to the men too," says the director.

The new new wave directors aren't aiming for an opulent 70 mm melodrama (think Johar's latest Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham) but a more natural, intimate cinema. They are tweaking the mainstream blueprint so that while their characters might still sing songs in Switzerland, the dialogue will be everyday, unadorned language. The films have the requisite gloss but also a realistic texture. Shaad Ali, 26, describes his Saathiya as a "slice of life". "It begins where most Hindi movie love stories end," he says. So newcomer Vivek Oberoi and Rani Mukherjee, playing a computer specialist and a doctor, will romance in Mumbai suburban trains and then discover how marriage alters love.

Of course the names backing the film, a remake of Maniratnam's smash hit Alaipayuthey, are all larger than life: Yash Chopra is financing, Bobby Bedi is producing and Maniratnam is the creative producer. But Ali, who started his film education as a three-year-old wandering on his father Muzzafar Ali's sets, is not making a mere copy. "The route is to be original, not competition or a Xerox copy of Mani's." Maniratnam is confident that his ex-assistant "will turn up with a good film". "The way he has got his artists to perform and the way he has executed the scenes is different," he says. Saathiya, like DCH, is being done in synch-sound. So actors won't need to dub and the film automatically becomes less synthetic.

Video library owner-turned-director Madhur Bhandarkar has done away with gloss completely. His Chandni Bar, last year's sleeper hit, is a grim look at the life of a Mumbai bar girl. The climax, in which a screaming teenager is sodomised in a remand home while his barely pubescent sister becomes a bar dancer and his widowed mother prostitutes herself to raise the money needed to get her son out, had audiences squirming in their seats. "People told me to change this ending," says Bhandarkar, 33. "But I was convinced. I wanted to choke the audience and I did." After the success of Chandni Bar, Bhandarkar is busy scripting a film on undertrials and fending off producers. At last count, he had 16 offers.

Bhandarkar's trajectory is the stuff of film folklore. Twelve years ago, he was running a video library, delivering cassettes on a bicycle in suburban Mumbai. He watched everything, taking in the latest release on the first day first show and consuming classics. After a five-year apprenticeship with Ram Gopal Varma, Bhandarkar made his debut with the B-grade action saga Trishakti. It sank and rendered him a pariah. Unemployed and depressed, Bhandarkar wandered into a beer bar. The harsh lights and gaudy girls inspired his second film.

MADHUR BHANDARKAR Big release: Chandni Bar Hatke factor: The grim look at the life of a bar dancer has audiences squirming.

A host of hopefuls also wait in the wings. Rohan Sippy, Ramesh's son, is half way through his Abhishek Bachchan-Aishwarya Rai starrer Kuch Na Kaho; erstwhile film critic and music-video director Kunal Kohli is making Mujhse Dosti Karoge with Hrithik Roshan; Dil Se's dialogue writer Timganshu Dhuliya is making a film for Zee TV; Ken Ghosh, who pioneered the music video, is making a college romance; Nikhil Advani, Johar's associate director, starts his debut film in June; and A-list names like choreographer Farah Khan, writer Honey Irani and actor Saurabh Shukla are turning to direction.

Of course, eventually the box office will decide whether these directors will shape Hindi cinema like their predecessors did. Bollywood's blinkered money men only follow success. Barjatya and his disciples created box-office history. So far, Akhtar and company have had niche successes. In fact, response to DCH has been so divided that even within a city, the more upmarket theatres have done better business. Akhtar, of course, isn't fazed. "Sometimes I feel that I should find a balance," he says, "but then I think, what the hell, just do what you want to."

That perhaps, is the best way to create history.