Anurag Kashyap on ‘restrictive’ atmosphere in film industry: ‘Anything remotely political or religious are big nos’

“I like long-form storytelling, and I’ve been working on lots of stuff” he said, adding, “but we’re also dealing with a kind of atmosphere where one is very restricted in the kind of drama that you can do.”

He continued, “At the moment, we can’t do anything that is remotely political, or remotely religious. Those are big nos. And big nos not because anyone has said that you can’t do that, but because everybody is living in an atmosphere where they don’t know how anybody is going to react. Right now, we’re very fragile, we’re very easily offended. So, for creators in India, it’s a great time to create long-form storytelling and new experimental stuff, but at the same time, we are walking a very thin line.”

Anurag co-directed the first Netflix original produced in India, Sacred Games, and while he has worked with the streamer again, he hasn’t done another show. His last film was the political satire Choked. His last theatrical release was 2018’s Manmarziyaan, also starring Taapsee.

While little is known about the upcoming sci-fi film Dobaaraa, which is a remake of the Spanish film Mirage, the actor and director revealed that it deals with time travel and parallel universes. The filmmaker also spoke about the 10-year anniversary of his gangster epic Gangs of Wasseypur, and called it his ‘biggest undoing’. He said that after Dobaaraa is released, he hopes that people finally stop expecting him to make films like Gangs of Wasseypur again.