Asif Kapadia: Big shame that I have not been to India for so long
Boundaries have become tougher to cross owing to the global health crisis, and Academy Award winning director-producer Asif Kapadia is having a hard time accepting the reality. “The situation is so complicated,” he tells us from London (UK), adding, “I’ve got friends in Brazil and the US, they’ve had issues. The UK had one of the worst experiences with the pandemic.”
The director, 49, recalls a time when people from India were confident of getting a grip over Covid-19. “Everyone said, ‘Oh, it hasn’t been so bad here’. Now, it has hit India hard. It’s rolling around the world at different speeds and different times,” he observes.
Watching his country suffer from afar is tough. As Kapadia puts it, “It’s terrible. All I can do is read about it. We just hope everyone is okay, and that the country gets through this. I hope people understand they do need to stay home, wear masks and be careful. There isn’t an escape from this virus.”
The BAFTA and Grammywinning director-producer, who picked India’s supernatural side as a subject for his latest web series, The Last Hour, is eager to visit the country, but he isn’t sure when that will be possible, given the pandemic.
“It’s a really big shame. It’s been a while since I have been there. But, I don’t know how easy it is going to be for us to just fly around as we used to back in the day,” rues Kapadia, who courted global fame with his documentaries Amy (2015) and Diego Maradona (2019).