Art house filmmaker Asif Kapadia talks about how he has accelerated his way into mainstream success with his BAFTA-winning documentary on Ayrton Senna

Kevin Lobo (MUMBAI MIRROR; March 11, 2012)

 

A self-confessed football fanatic, Asif Kapadia might be a sports enthusiast, but had little to do with Formula One. For the past couple of years though, he has been obsessed with the sport and its legend Ayrton Senna. Pouring over 15,000 hours of footage, “a lot on fast-forward,” he confesses, Kapadia has crafted Senna, the BAFTA and Sundance award-winning documentary on the Brazilian racing legend. And now, he is here to present it in India, at Enlighten’s film festival next Sunday. Asif says, “He was so famous that everything he did was documented. Every race has different camera angles, and we had to go through all of it to find the perfect emotion and shot. Remember this was before Twitter, PR and Youtube, so a lot of it would have been lost if no one had made this movie.”

This he was able to do thanks to the movie’s writer Manish Pandey, who dedicated seven years to researching Senna. The Indian-origin director, has a deeper Indian connect. His first feature length film, The Warrior, featured Irfan Khan and received rave reviews in arthouse circles.

The Royal College of Art grad’s praise has been restricted to film festivals till now but Senna changed the game for Asif. Gone are the stark landscapes and precision shots that have given Asif a name. Senna is as adrenaline More >