Anurag Kashyap says he can never leave Hindi films for Hollywood, rues how box office controls Bollywood: ‘Gangs of Wasseypur was taken off screens for Ek Tha Tiger’

Yet, Kashyap has continued to champion pathbreaking independent films and helm diverse projects himself in the recent past– from Manmarziyaan, Dobaaraa, Choked to his upcoming Sunny Leone starrer Kennedy, which premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and recently was the closing movie at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne

In an interview with Indianexpress.com, the filmmaker talks about why he wants to “run away” from ever going to Hollywood, the fight between commerce and craft and the battle to reach a wider audience with his films.

Edited excerpts:

You have been such a regular at film festivals…

I can never get enough of film festivals. I love going there. It’s a way I like to spend my holiday, watching other people’s films more than looking forward to how people react to my film. I go to every festival and watch four to five films a day. I also get to meet my filmmaker friends from across the world, and we only meet at festivals. It’s a lot of fun, because we talk about things, get into discussions, have amazing conversations. Back home, I lock myself in a room, read books.

Are you detached from your work?

I’m very attached from my films but I also put them behind me. When I made Paanch, I was so attached to it that I kept waiting for years for it to release, hoping my life would change. But it didn’t. Then I made Black Friday but that film was banned. I went into depression. I realised the only way to come out of this is to finish a film, then make your next. Otherwise it pulls you down. If you get attached to a film, you set expectations which in turn starts defining your life. It makes you bitter and everything. I don’t want to go there. I’d rather be positive and make my next. I’ve finished writing my next script. I was waiting for Kriti Sanon to come back (from her holiday) so she could finally hear the script she had been waiting for three years from me! It takes time for good work to happen, to write good scripts. I just finished it and will now narrate.

When you are at these film festivals, watching all kinds of spectacular cinema, does it ever lead to you feeling inferior?

I don’t feel inferior, I do feel inspired. There’s also this feeling that, ‘I wish I wasn’t born in India. If I was born somewhere else, maybe my life would be different.’ My films resonate with people all over the world, in India the way my films resonate with makers and audiences from Tamil Nadu and Kerala, that doesn’t happen with Hindi. I go through these things sometimes. But I was born here, and my stories will be in Hindi. Which is why I run away from the opportunity of going to Hollywood because everything is different, including culture. The way I can tell my stories here, I can’t anywhere else.

Then I also look at the positive side that I’m so fortunate to make movies here because I get to make them faster than my contemporaries from across the world, because they take time to raise the funding. They make one film in four years, I’ve a release every year. There are some things you might feel bad about, but there are so many things that are great about being here.

Why do you think your work doesn’t resonate with Hindi cinema audience? 

I think because Hindi has a template. It is also heavily controlled by the trade, box office, star system. The latter is there even in the South but look at the Tamil film industry, they’ve given five hits with first time filmmakers and not with big stars. There’s a certain kind of equality. In Malayalam, they don’t do so many promotions, just straight up drop their films. In Tamil Nadu, everyone gets to promote with an equal amount, there’s a ceiling to it. But here, a big film’s promotion will dominate and a small film will disappear.

Even theater owners don’t give space, but equal space is given there. Today, people talk highly about Gangs of Wasseypur, but it was taken off cinemas in nine days because a big film like Ek Tha Tiger was coming. It wasn’t the decision of a star or a producer, it was the decision of the theatres. If that film had done a business of Rs 26 cr in nine days, it would have done more if it got space. So the system is such and we don’t even have enough cinemas. I’ve chosen to make my kind of films in the atmosphere where I understand why it works and why it doesn’t. So the consequences are also mine, as long as I don’t lose money for others. That’s a lesson I’ve learnt, so I keep my budgets low.