Shekhar Kapur says I don’t know why people still call me a director

• Shekhar Kapur is making a comeback.
• I haven’t made a film in India since the Bandit Queen.
• It has been 30 years since I made a film in India.

On the second day of the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on December 2, 2022, Indian filmmaker Shekhar Kapur smiles for the camera as he addresses the cast and crew of “What’s Love Got to Do with It.”

With the release of What’s Love Got to Do with It, Shekhar Kapur is making a comeback in the world of film. In 2007, the drama Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which starred Cate Blanchett, was the director’s most recent full-length picture. Even though he’s been away, he insists that he hasn’t lost touch with Indian cinema.

“I haven’t made a film in India since the Bandit Queen (1994). I don’t know why people call me a Bollywood director, unless you consider Mr. India (1987) and Masoom (1983) a Bollywood project. I don’t know what describes Bollywood,” Kapur tells us when asked about the long gap in an interview.

The 77-year-old continued, “It’s been 30 years since I made a film in India. (In this time) I have been making films outside. I’ve been doing theatre outside (of India). I have done theatre in Germany. I’ve done a big series on William Shakespeare. I teach at MIT. I have had absolutely no time. I have been a part of the World Economic Forum. I am an environmentalist. So, life was busy. Then I found time to make a film, found a script and made — What’s Love Got to Do with It?”.

“Working on it was another exploration… Nothing is about defining things. When you see the film, you realise that at the end, the characters realise that we have to forgive, have to be compassionate. Because relationships are not about saying, ‘I love you’…. Love is a mystery. It’s a question of exploring that sense of mystery”.

He ends “Not that I can’t appreciate an artist. That is another culture of another nation. So art transcends international boundaries, definitely,”.

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