Years into filmmaking, Sudhir Mishra is back to the beginning

The director’s movies are often social commentaries but he says the first duty of a filmmaker is towards his craft

“I think I am going back to being the filmmaker I started out to be,” says director Sudhir Mishra who has had an almost four-decade-long career.

Sudhir Mishra believes lately he’s reconnecting to the kind of cinema he loves and is back to being the filmmaker he started out to be

“I am drawn towards the lives of people living in the margins. In my films you see social ramifications, often political, because that is intrinsic to who I am” —Sudhir Mishra

Mishra says issues should not be made in to movies simply for effect

“I have no problem with cinema as escapism. Cinema can also be a balm for distressed souls” —Sudhir Mishra

(Clockwise) Stills from Sudhir Mishra’s latest film, Serious Men, Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin (1996) and Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (2003), and (inset) his National-award-winning Dharavi (1992)