Oscar-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia talks to DIFF directors Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam about his filmmaking journey from fiction to documentary, and his special connection to India.
Asif Kapadia is a BAFTA award winning filmmaker known for his visually striking films. He has an interest in exploring the lives of ‘outsiders,’ characters living in timeless, extreme and unforgiving circumstances or landscapes. His films have been awarded and distributed internationally and shown how versatile and expressive British cinema can be. Born in Hackney, London in 1972, Kapadia studied filmmaking at the Royal College of Art where he first gained recognition with his short film The Sheep Thief (1977), telling the story of a gifted street-kid and the family who take him in, made with non-professional actors in Rajasthan, India. The film won many awards including Second Prize at the 1998 Cannes International Film Festival (Cinefoundation), and the Grand Prix at the 1997 European Short Film Festival in Brest. Kapadia’s distinct visual style continued with his first feature The Warrior shot in the deserts of Rajasthan and the snow capped Himalayas. The Warrior was championed in the British Press as ‘epic’ and ‘stunning’ and won two BAFTA awards for Outstanding British Film of the Year and The Carl Foreman Award for Special Achievement by a Director in their First Feature. He went on to direct the documentary films Senna (2010) and Amy (2015), which earned him an Oscar and a Grammy Award. His last documentary, Diego Maradona (2019), is the first of a trilogy on child geniuses and fame.
Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, Indian-Tibetan filmmakers and artists, have been working together for more than 30 years. Their work includes award-winning films and art installations. Their documentary, The Sun Behind the Clouds (2009), won the Vaclav Havel Award at the One World Film Festival in Prague. Their Tibetan-language feature films, Dreaming Lhasa (2005) and The Sweet Requiem (2018) premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. They are also the directors of the Dharamshala International Film Festival, which they founded in 2012.
