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Asif Kapadia (born 1972) is a British filmmaker. Kapadia is best known for his trilogy of narratively driven, archive-constructed documentaries Senna, Amy and Diego Maradona.
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.
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 people 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. "U.K. Box Office: 'Amy' becomes second biggest doc ever" . Cornerstone film. "Amy Winehouse documentary breaks box office records". The Guardian.
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: "Donald 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.
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 Twitter supporting the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples in reference to the Gaza War. Grierson Awards 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."
Kapadia's selections were:
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.
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.
Filmography
1994 Indian Tales Short film. 12 mins long. 1996 The Waiting Room Short film. 8 mins long. 1996 Wild West Short film. 1 min long. 1997 The Sheep Thief Short film. 24 mins long. 2001 The Warrior 2006 The Return 2007 Far North 2010 Senna Released in 2010 in Brazil, 2011 everywhere else 2013 Monsoon Shootout 2015 Amy Won the 2016 Academy Award for Documentary Feature 2015 Ronaldo 2016 2016 Ali and Nino 2017 Mindhunter (TV series) Netflix series. Directed episodes 3 & 4. 2019 Diego Maradona 2022 Creature 2024 2024 2073 Selected in Out of Competition - Non-Fiction at the Venice Film Festival 2025 Kenny Dalglish Documentary, premiere at the Rome Festival
Awards and nominations
2011 British Independent Film Awards Best British Documentary Senna Best British Independent Film Best Technical Achievement Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary Satellite Awards Best Documentary Film Grierson Awards Best Cinema Documentary Los Angeles Film Festival Audience Award for Best International Feature Melbourne International Film Festival Most Popular Documentary Award Moscow International Film Festival Audience Award Adelaide Film Festival Best Documentary – Audience Award 2012 British Academy Film Awards Best Documentary Best Editing Outstanding British Film Producers Guild of America Awards Documentary Feature Writers Guild of America Awards Documentary London Film Critics Circle Awards Documentary of the Year Technical Achievement Evening Standard British Film Awards Best Documentary Cinema Eye Honors Outstanding Achievement in Editing Outstanding Achievement in non-fiction Feature Filmmaking Outstanding Achievement in an Original Music Score Audience Choice Prize FOCAL International Awards Best Use of Footage in a Cinema Release Best Use of Sports Footage Special Award for the contribution to Archive Filmmaking Industry Best Use of Footage in a Home Entertainment Release 2015 Hollywood Film Awards Best Documentary of the Year Amy 2016 British Academy Film Awards Best Documentary Outstanding British Film Academy Awards Best Documentary – Feature 2016>Oscars.org
External links
Categories: 1972 Births, Living People, English Film Directors, English People Of Indian Descent, British Ismailis, Grammy Award Winners, Alumni Of The University Of Wales, Newport, Directors Of Best Documentary Feature Academy Award Winners, Collage Filmmakers, English People Of Gujarati Descent, Khoja Ismailis, Directors Of Best Documentary European Film Award Winners
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