Interview: Sumit Saxena - “With the advent of AI, every artist will have to learn to code”

I was born and raised in Lucknow. I said, “It breaks my heart but I think it is a film.” One and a half years later, I made a 30-minute short film out of the same script and showed it to him. After that, I started receiving 17 phone calls a day from people who told me, “Let’s make a Delhi-based boy's flick” and all that. Here are the exact films that made me come to Mumbai: The Arshad Warsi-starrer Sehar, Vishal Bharadwaj’s Maqbool, Sudhir Mishra’s Hazaron Khawahishein Aisi, Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday and Gulaal, and then two films by Chandan Arora – Main Meri Patni Aur Woh and Main Madhuri Dixit Banana Chahti Hoon. At that time, Gulaal was just about 80% made and I met Anurag accidentally in Delhi and he said, “Let me show you a film which isn’t released.” He showed me that film on DVD and I was blown away by Piyush Mishra’s poetry and the overall madness in the film.