My wife Victoria Harwood was art director on 'Far North,' and she had designed my student film, 'The Sheep Thief.'
Asif Kapadia
If I'm going to do something, I'm going to spend however long it takes to get it right.
As a filmmaker, you complete a film you have spent years obsessively making, and you know the release prints will never look quite the same; prints get scratched and dirty.
My background is Indian, so I believe in a spiritual idea that there is another level, another layer or layers, if you will, above us. I believe that there are elements that allow things to be drawn together, a sort of energy.
You don't have to be someone who likes walking a tightrope across the Twin Towers to watch 'Man On Wire.'
For me, 'Amy' is a very dark film about love.
I don't really rely on watching video monitors. They put you at a certain distance from your actors, and it makes me feel less a part of what's really happening in the scene.
'Senna' took five years, 'Amy' took three years. You try and say, 'Look, there's no deadline.' That's important. Just saying, 'We've got to make the film. And once the film's ready, it will be out there.'
As a kid, I thought movies were boring. My parents would hire VHS recorders for the weekend and watch Bollywood movies. I'd get bored and go out to Stoke Newington common to play football.
My team and I used the actual footage to create a three-act story of the life of Ayrton Senna. There are no talking heads and no voiceover. Senna narrates his own epic, dramatic, thrilling journey.
Boxing is made for film - there is corruption, violence, tragedy and the chance that the underdog can catch the champion with one lucky punch.
On 'Senna,' it got to the point where there was so much footage that our first editor had the wild suggestion that we only use the archive.
The Tour de France would make a great movie. Drugs, corruption, political chicanery, guys risking their lives - everything you need for a great sports drama.
While still a young student at film school, I was lucky enough to get a golden ticket to a Martin Scorsese master class at BAFTA in Piccadilly: fancy, but technically still 'the flicks'.
Directing can be very lonely and quite intimidating.
My family didn't film anything. But then you look deeper and realize, maybe there are photographs, there are things. It's also context: You give something a context, and suddenly it becomes really deep or meaningful footage.
I never know going in if I've even got a movie to make. Once you start making a film, you hope there's going to be enough material! My job as a director is always to push for more.
I studied graphic design originally. I used to like drawing, and I was quite into technical drawing. I was always interested in the visual medium, but I thought I was going to be an architect or something like that, but it's quite a lonely job.
I don't normally make documentaries. I'm a drama director. I've made a few short docs, but I don't like talking heads or 'voice of God' narrators.
I made several short films with very little dialogue. I'm still not a fan of talking heads. My stories are told with images as much as possible.
I love telling stories with images. But I think there's more to just saying a movie is great visually.
I often make films about subjects I don't really know much about. Maybe it's laziness, but I don't go in there having done a tonne of research; the research happens while I'm making the film.
'Do the Right Thing' has been a big influence on me. I saw it when it first came out in 1989. I was about 18, and it blew me away on many levels - I had never seen anything like it before.
People have always been recording what's going on around them in one form or another.
The big thing for me is to make films that you feel, whether you feel happy, whether you feel sad, whether you feel sick; it's to make the audience feel so that the next day they remember what they saw.
I lived in Camden, Primrose Hill and Kentish Town for 10 years.
'Amy' is somewhere in the middle of authorized and unauthorized.
My films often have a spiritual dimension which comes from my Muslim background, and I'm happy to tackle that in cinema.
After Newport, I worked in television for a while, and then I went to The Royal College Of Art and did a master's degree. I really did study quite a lot!
Hopefully, when people see 'Senna', they will understand why this inspirational story needed to be told, why it had to be made as a movie for the big screen, and why it is a film for everyone.
There's this great TV show we have called 'Later... with Jools Holland', a live-music show on Friday nights. Anyone and everyone's been on it.
I'd always intended to make 'Far North' straight after 'The Warrior.' We had the rights to the short story, the script was in development, and I knew where I wanted to shoot it. It just took a long time getting the script together and raising the finance.
I worked with Michelle Yeoh on my last film, 'Far North,' and her partner is Jean Todt; at the time, he ran Ferrari. So I went as a VIP to the British grand prix.
I used to live in Pillgwenlly, and there was this old Italian pizzeria that used to be there with a really amazing character who ran it.
To be teammates in Formula One actually means you are first rivals, not really mates.
We were studying at Newport Film School, and I found that the only way for me to make films - because you need people and you need equipment - was that I had to be a student.
I made three short films of my own which I wrote, produced, directed... you did everything in those days. My favourite one was something I shot on VHS... a little documentary.
It's always great to be able to go to a premiere with the actors there.
My interest in filmmaking was always very much the visuals and images.
Weirdly enough, I live in London - was born there and have lived there all my life - but I hadn't made a film in London for a long time. I hadn't found the right subject. I liked going away, to some far flung place.
A lot of the time when I'm working, I'm abroad.
I wanted to make a film that wouldn't just appeal to Formula One fans. That's what the great sports documentaries do - 'Hoop Dreams,' 'When We Were Kings' - they're human dramas first, sport second, if at all.
A big part of my filmmaking is that I can go somewhere new and, visually, be excited by it.
The subjects have to come with questions for me. I don't make films where I'm a massive fan.
I worked in TV for a short time and couldn't stand the fact that we'd always be filming someone talking, just giving information.
We were working on 'Senna' for a long time before we were fully financed, so we didn't actually have an editor for a while.
We want to make movies for the big screen. We want people to go to the theater and feel like they're watching a movie.
I like to make films where I learn along the way, like the audience.
I'm a sport fan. So, I have always watched everything, and I used to watch racing. Formula One was always on. The genius about it is that it's on at lunchtime on a Sunday.
In a film called 'Senna,' the clue is in the title, and we have a Brazilian badge on our sleeve as we were making it. We were making it from Senna's point of view, with Senna narrating it.
