Sudhir Mishra

The 58-year-old director's new film, Daas Dev, releases this month.

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SUCCESS TO ME MEANS… The ability to do my work in ways that my independence is protected, and to have the freedom to not work when I have nothing to say. To always be with people who I value and who value me. And, in some way, to be able to pass the baton of what I know to others [in the way] many have passed on to me, such as countless filmmakers. The whole history of film-making has passed on so much to me, specifically, Kundan Shah, [Vidhu] Vinod Chopra, Saeed Mirza, Ketan Mehta, Shekhar Kapur, Mahesh Bhatt, Javed Akhtar.

MY MAJOR CHALLENGE… is my own self. My major challenge is always to create an environment for myself [in which] I provoke myself. Fight the mediocrity in which we all collapse into. My major challenge is to renew myself every time. I always think that I’m not as good as I think I could have been. That always worries me, and that’s my constant challenge to provoke myself and to work in ways in which I can grow as an individual and as a film-maker.