Asif Kapadia

Early life and education

Kapadia was born in 1972 in north London, to an Indian Muslim family. He attended Newport Film School (formerly part of the University of Wales, Newport, now the University of South Wales), achieved a first-class degree (BA Hons) in Film, TV and Photographic Arts from the University of Westminster and an MA (RCA) in Directing for Film and TV at the Royal College of Art.

Kapadia has said he sees himself as a Londoner ("a Hackney lad"), northern European, with Indian family heritage. These unique characteristics helped to make him stand out as a film-maker when he was starting out.

“I don’t come from private school, I don’t come from money. My family were not in the film industry. I’m not white, I’m brown, and my background is Muslim. My family are from India and are quite religious.

“As the youngest of five kids, my parents kind of let me do what I wanted to do. I was able to have a point of view, I wasn’t told, ‘You must do this’: I picked what I wanted to study, I never did A-levels. When I was at university, I would always argue with the tutors, because I would kind of have to do what they told me to do.

“Things like that were just me going, ‘I don’t feel that’s right, I’m gonna do this’. So I’m quite stubborn, I guess.”

Career

Kapadia's first feature film, The Warrior, was shot in the Himalayas and the deserts of Rajasthan. The film caught the attention of The Arts Foundation who in 2001 awarded him a fellowship in Film Directing. Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian described The Warrior as possessing "mighty breadth" and "shimmering beauty"; the film was nominated for three BAFTA awards, winning two: the Alexander Korda Award for the outstanding British Film of the Year 2003 and The Carl Foreman Award for Special Achievement by a Director, Screenwriter or Producer in their First Feature.

Far North premiered at the Venice Film Festival, based on a dark short story by Sara Maitland. Kapadia used the brutal arctic landscape to show how desperation and loneliness drives a woman to harm the person she loves.

Kapadia's fourth feature, Senna, was the life story of Brazilian motor-racing champion, Ayrton Senna. The film won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary, the BAFTA Award for Best Editing and the World Cinema Audience Award Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival 2011. Senna was nominated for Outstanding British Film of the Year.

Kapadia's next film Amy was a documentary that depicted the life and death of British singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse. Amy was released on 3 July 2015 in the United Kingdom, New York and Los Angeles, and worldwide on 10 July. The film has been described as "heartbreaking", "awe-inspiring", "unmissable", "the best documentary of the year" and "a tragic masterpiece". The film received five out of five star ratings when it was reviewed at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival in May. The film has become the highest grossing British documentary, and second highest grossing documentary of all time in the United Kingdom, overtaking Kapadia's 2010 movie Senna.

In 2018, a documentary film titled Maradona, based on Argentine football legend Diego Maradona, was released. Following on from Senna and Amy, Kapadia states: "Maradona is the third part of a trilogy about child geniuses and fame." He added: "I was fascinated by his journey, wherever he went there were moments of incredible brilliance and drama. He was a leader, taking his teams to the very top, but also many lows in his career. He was always the little guy fighting against the system... and he was willing to do anything, to use all of his cunning and intelligence to win."

In 2019, Kapadia was awarded as Honorary Associate of London Film School.

In May 2021, he released the musical docuseries 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything, based on the book 1971 – Never a Dull Moment: Rock's Golden Year, by the British music journalist David Hepworth.

In 2024, Kapadia’s 2073 was released. The film is a science fiction docudrama set in a dystopian future, exploring the subjects of climate change, corporate fascism, and the global erosion of democracy through the rise of fascism, fictionally depicting a future where these forces are allowed to continue unchecked. Through the creation of the film, Kapadia drew parallels to the Trump administration, stating the following: "Trump has been explicit about getting revenge on people. And now you have some of the richest and most powerful people in the world who became so through the collection of data. They’re now in power with someone who said, ‘I’m going to be a dictator’. It’s like Covid. When it happened in certain parts of the world, people kept thinking, we’re immune to it. It’s never going to happen. And it came and it rolled its way around the whole globe."

Kapadia is a signatory of the Film Workers for Palestine boycott pledge that was published in September 2025.

Personal life

Kapadia met and worked with Victoria Harwood on his 1997 film, The Sheep Thief. The pair would marry in 2006.

In the early 2000s, Kapadia was subjected to xenophobic practices after a taxi driver reported him to government officials for taking photos of New York City during a trip. As a result, Kapadia was placed on a US government watch list that required him to undergo extra screening while travelling. In response to the incident, Universal Studios provided Kapadia with a letter verifying his occupation, intended for presentation to government authorities. Ultimately, Kapadia avoided unnecessary travel to the United States for several years. Kapadia described his experience: "I would get stopped and interviewed two times before I got on a plane, pulled out in a room. I started realising that every time I show my boarding pass, instead of a green light going off, a red light goes off, and then you have to be taken somewhere for an interview… Everyone else in the crew would go through and I’d get pulled up. I had to get a letter from the head of Universal to say: ‘Asif is working on this project for us."

In 2015, Kapadia signed an open letter in solidarity with the people of Palestine, pledging to boycott professional invitations to Israel and to refuse funding from any institutions linked to its government. In the letter, the boycott drew comparisons to the Artists United Against Apartheid movement, a 1985 collective of artists who protested South African apartheid.

In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, Kapadia signed a letter endorsing the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election. The letter stated that "Labour's election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few."

In October 2024, Kapadia shared posts on the social media platform X supporting the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples in reference to the Gaza War. The Grierson Trust deemed some of the posts to be antisemitic, and subsequently removed Kapadia as a patron. Kapadia issued an apology, telling BBC News he was "mortified by the hurt and offence" that some of his posts have caused. Kapadia would go on to state that he is "equally passionate about all anti-racism". The Grierson Trust’s treatment of Kapadia led senior Muslim officials in the British television industry to boycott the 2024 Grierson Awards.

In September 2025, Kapadia signed an open pledge with Film Workers for Palestine pledging not to work with Israeli film institutions "that are implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people."

Favourite films

In 2022, Kapadia participated in the Sight & Sound film polls of that year. It is held every ten years to select the greatest films of all time, by asking contemporary directors to select ten films of their choice.

Kapadia's selections were:

• *Vertigo * (1958)
• Raging Bull (1980)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• La Jetée (1962)
• Once upon a Time in the West (1968)
• Don't Look Now (1973)
• The Godfather Part II (1974)
• Come and See (1985)
• Yojimbo (1961)
• In the Mood for Love (2000)

In September 2019, Kapadia appeared on BBC Radio 4's The Film Programme in which he told presenter Francine Stock of his love for the Vietnamese gangster movie Cyclo by writer-director Trần Anh Hùng. He saw it when it first came out in 1996, when he was a film student, and it crystallised his ambitions for the type of film-making he wished to pursue. As he explained to Stock, "a lightbulb went off in my head" and his life was never the same again.

Filmography

Awards and nominations

References

References

1. (8 July 2011). "The Saturday interview: Asif Kapadia". [[The Guardian]].
2. (24 June 2012). "Asif Kapadia's 2012 Odyssey: the film that captures London's dark side". The Guardian.
3. "History | documentary newport".
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5. "BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs, Asif Kapadia, film director".
6. (2024-06-21). "'You've got to trust your gut' - Oscar-winner Asif Kapadia on new Roger Federer doc and stellar career".
7. Matt Warren. (24 August 2001). "Review The silent soldier The Warrior". [[The Scotsman]].
8. Bradshaw, Peter. (10 May 2002). "The Warrior". theguardian.com.
9. [http://www.cornerstonefilm.com/news-blog/2015/10/17/uk-box-office-amy-becomes-second-biggest-doc-ever "U.K. Box Office: 'Amy' becomes second biggest doc ever"] {{Webarchive. link. (1 October 2017 . Cornerstone film.)
10. [https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jul/06/amy-winehouse-documentary-breaks-records-box-office "Amy Winehouse documentary breaks box office records"]. The Guardian.
11. (1 October 2017). "Film-maker Asif Kapadia: 'Maradona is the third part of a trilogy about child geniuses and fame'". The Guardian.
12. (1 October 2017). "Amy director Asif Kapadia set to make Maradona documentary". The Independent.
13. "ASIF KAPADIA ANNOUNCED AS HONORARY ASSOCIATE OF THE LONDON FILM SCHOOL London Film School".
14. (20 May 2021). "Apple TV+'s '1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything': TV Review".
15. (3 September 2024). "2073 review – Asif Kapadia rages against the death of democracy and our planet".
16. Cadwalladr, Carol. (15 December 2024). "'Trump has been explicit about revenge': Asif Kapadia on his new film about the threat to democracy". The Guardian.
17. Betts, Anna. (2025-09-10). "Actors and directors pledge not to work with Israeli film groups 'implicated in genocide'". The Guardian.
18. Leigh, Danny. (7 June 2019). "Asif Kapadia: the director who reinvented the documentary". Financial Times.
19. Frost, Caroline. (15 December 2024). "Oscar-Winning Director Asif Kapadia "Spent Decade On U.S. Watch List After Taxi Driver Reported Him"". Deadline.
20. Irving, Sarah. (14 February 2025). "More than 700 UK artists pledge to boycott Israel". The Electronic Intifada.
21. (13 February 2015). "Letter: Over 100 artists announce a cultural boycott of Israel". The Guardian.
22. (3 December 2019). "Vote for hope and a decent future". [[The Guardian]].
23. Proctor, Kate. (3 December 2019). "Coogan and Klein lead cultural figures backing Corbyn and Labour". [[The Guardian]].
24. Noor, Nanji. (11 October 2024). "Oscar-winning director sorry for 'antisemitic posts'". [[BBC News]].
25. Kanter, Jake. (5 November 2024). "Asif Kapadia's Dismissal As Grierson Patron Sparks Boycott Of Prestigious Documentary Awards". Deadline.
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29. (29 June 2024). "Biennale Cinema 2024 {{!}} Out of Competition".
30. Nick Vivarelli. (19 September 2025). "Asif Kapadia Doc on Liverpool FC Legend Kenny Dalglish to Premiere at Rome Film Festival; Jennifer Lawrence Expected to Attend With 'Die My Love'". [[Variety (magazine).
31. "Award Screening Schedule". Sundance Institute.
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34. Buckeridge, Julian. "Audience Awards Announced". Atthecinema.net.
35. (15 March 2011). "Adelaide Film Festival". Adelaide Film Festival.
36. [https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2016 2016. Oscars.org]