From Wanting to Become a Scientist, to Being a Director.

About the Director...Anurag Kashyap!

"Cinema is much more than heroes and villains."...once said by Anurag Kashyap, one of those directors to create path breaking cinema in India who apparently highlights the women in his films as independent and strong headed. the women in his cinema are unabashed, who voice out their demands and cravings for which they yearn and fight in their very element. He gives a one of a kind treatment to each of his female characters. Kashyap's craftsmanship outshines the women we see whom he wrote, as they are liberated from the traditional and conservative bounds of an expected definition.

Anurag Kashyap

Anurag Kashyap is a critically acclaimed director and screen writer, born in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh and grew up in several cities including Varanasi and Saharanpur as his father worked for the State Electricity Board. He did his early schooling in Dehradun and the age of 8 learned at Scindia school in Gwalior. He was fascinated with films since childhood. He wanted to become a scientist and went to Delhi to study Zoology at the Hansraj College and graduated in 1993.

During college days, he began watching films again and got involved with drugs and alcohol too. During his face of confusion and depression, he had join a street theatre group 'Jana Natya Manch', where he ended up doing a lot of street plays. Meanwhile, he was introduced to World Cinema by his friends and later at the 'International Film Festival of India', he ended up seeing a total of 55 films in 10 days. 'Bicycle Theives' was the film which influence him the most. He said that this one film festival made him decide that this is what he wants to be a part of and within the next 6 months he was in Mumbai.

He tried with place in his initial days in Mumbai and later on, he wrote an 8 page drama called Main (1) which did well at college drama festivals and people advised him to pursue his career in writing. Later he started being around Shivam Nair, Sriram Raghavan and Shiv Subramaniam. These people and their thoughts have shaped Kashyap's understanding differently and that content consumption reflects in his work since then.

Kashyap got his major break when Manoj Bajpai while working on 'Daud' showed 'Auto Narayan' to producer director Ramgopal Varma. RGV then hired him to write the script of Satya. His writing (screenplay and dialogues) continued for Kaun (1999), Shool (1999, dialogues) and Mani Ratnam's Yuva (2004, dialogues). He made his directorial debut with Paanch (2000) with Kay Kay Menon as the lead. Later in 2007, he adapted Stephen King's short story 'Quitters Inc.' as 'No Smoking'.

And then...there was no looking back. His work began to get noticed since 'Black Friday' based on the 1993 Bombay Blast. This film is usually considered as his directorial debut as it was released and Paanch didn't. He had to go through various censorship obstacles for majority of his films. All of his directorial films are: