It could be you

Asif Kapadia was born and raised in Hackney to Indian parents. He first went to India when he was 23, but of late he has become more intimately acquainted with his parents’ homeland. First of all, he shot his Graduate film The Sheep Thief for the Royal College of Art there. As it went on to win the Jury Prize at Cannes and many major awards besides, he decided to return to India for his debut feature the magnificent The Warrior. The movie, a Man With No Name-style revenge tale with a sublime rural Indian backdrop, has wowed critics on a global scale.

Moviehouse caught up with Asif at the film’s recent Irish premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh.

TB: The film has a very epic, Cecil B. De Mille feel about it. Did he have a massive cast-of-thousands budget, or just a very clever producer?

AK: “Well we just really stretched the little money we had got really well! We had a crew of about thirty people from the UK, but the rest of the crew - and there were a hundred and sometimes two hundred of them – were all from India. Then once we incorporated the beautiful landscape and the people, that helped too. Inevitably though, the basic costs are cheaper in India. It was really on the back of making The Sheep Thief that I realised what we could do there.”

TB: The logistics of scouting for locations alone must have been a nightmare, though.

AK: “Definitely. Basically, everytime I would finish a draft of the script I would then go off with this friend of mine and we would hire a car and just drive off into the desert. Once the main road ended – and it would – we would just head off on a dirt track and go east or west. And that’s how we did location hunting. Just car-hire. And that was great because we didn’t want to use the more familiar locations – the ones which had been used for classic British colonial drama – for obvious reasons. And I wanted something with a bit more texture, not too touristy. And we even did the car-hire thing going around the Himalayas.”

TB: There are roads in the Himalayas?

AK: “Yeah. Well, strictly speaking there is one! There are these one-lane roads, with sheer drops and no barriers. They are also prone to frequent rock falls, and yet out of nowhere, at 90 mph, you will get these absolutely huge buses. And often, they fly off these ledges as well, and that’s such a sad thing. Even while we were filming, we saw quite a few lorries and trucks just falling down the hill. It was terrifying. A sheer mile drop.”

TB: And how did they legislate for the more banal difficulties associated with an exotic shoot?

AK: “Well, we had a great production team. We had to be happy when it got to comfortable 38 degrees outside. And then the nights were worse. It would be really hot and then – bang – one minute after sundown, it would be snowing. And then the scorpions. And then the rabid dogs. One of the crew was bitten, and had to be flown home. It was tough. But it was worth the gamble really.”

TB: How is your Hindi?

AK: “Very rough. It was hard to communicate on occasion.”

TB: Did that complicate the casting process?

AK: “Well, I knew from other shorts I have made in the past that I needed a mix of professional actors and non-professionals. So for example, the lead actor Irfan Khan is in the Indian version of The X-Files. He has done a few movies but what they say in India is that he is not pretty enough. But he was amazing. And he’s got such a great face. You can believe he has done some bad things just looking at that face, when really he is the sweetest person you could ever meet. Then we looked for a real street kid for the thief. We met Noor Mani at a school set up by the makers of Salaam Bombay! for kids who scrape together a living in the railway stations. Noor was shy and the last boy to audition. He had lived rough since he was seven. Now, since The Warrior, he is getting roles in Bollywood movies so that’s really great.”

TB: What kind of film influences came into play?

AK: “Well, I’m a real fan of World Cinema. I love everything. I love Chinese films, Taiwanese films, early Bresson and Pasolini and people like that. I love The Man Escapes. I love stories that can be told through editing alone. People who are very visual and who are very interested in real people.”

TB: His first gig was in the dazzling world of teatime celebrity as the director of the UK National Lottery show. Does he miss it?

AK: “No. I definitely don’t. But you know, it did teach me about discipline. Live TV does that. And I must say that it was an absolute dream job when I had just finished college. I mean, I could direct and pay the rent at the same time! Another thing about TV is that it teaches you to work fast. You don’t have the luxury of deciding that something doesn’t feel right because it has to be on tomorrow or whatever.”

TB: Would he describe The Warrior as an Anglo-Indian film?

AK: “Well, I’m from Hackney but my parents both came over from Gujurat in India during the ’60s so I’ve always been used to a kind of multi-culturalism. I’m part of the first UK-born generation coming through and I’m interested in making my films as global as possible so that they reflect those different parts of me. Like next up for me is a siege movie in Mexico and a ghost story in Japan. That’s why this whole trend for all things Indian has caught us unaware. Little did I know when I started out making The Warrior four years ago, that by the time it came it came out it would be hip.’

TB: Sounds like he’s not too impressed by this new brand of cultural tourism focused on India. He’s not enamoured with the whole saris-on-catwalks, Bombay Dreams trend then?

AK: ‘Well, it’s not for me, that’s all I’ll say! When something becomes hip, you can be sure it’s because of people who just don’t know. It’s never because of people who really have experience of a given culture. Okay, the cynic might say that it is brilliant timing for our film’s release because there is money to be made, but nobody likes just getting swept up as part of a trend. Still, it will benefit up-and-coming film and music and art, so that’s something.’