Meet Asif Kapadia

Asif Kapadia is an Academy Award, BAFTA, Grammy, and European Film Award-winning director, writer, and producer, renowned for pushing the boundaries of cinematic storytelling. Widely regarded as one of the most influential filmmakers of his generation, Kapadia is best known for his groundbreaking trilogy — Senna, Amy, and Diego Maradona — which redefined the documentary genre by crafting emotionally powerful, archive-only narratives that play with the urgency and drama of fiction.

Born in Hackney, East London to a family who migrated from Gujarat, India in the 1960s, Kapadia grew up surrounded by multicultural influences that shaped his passion for exploring identity, fame, politics, and the human condition through cinema. He studied filmmaking at the Royal College of Art, where his graduation film The Sheep Thief, shot in Rajasthan with a cast of street children, earned him global attention and a prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Kapadia’s breakout feature The Warrior (2001), an epic shot in India starring Irrfan Khan, won two BAFTAs and established him as a powerful new voice in British cinema. He continued to experiment with form and scale, culminating in Senna (2010), a visceral portrait of Formula One legend Ayrton Senna told entirely through archival footage. Senna became a critical and commercial success, winning BAFTAs for Best Documentary and Best Editing and influencing a new generation of documentary filmmakers.

Amy (2015), his haunting portrayal of Amy Winehouse’s life and artistry, premiered at Cannes and became the most successful British documentary of all time. It won the Academy Award, BAFTA, Grammy, and European Film Award for Best Documentary. Kapadia’s next film, Diego Maradona (2019), offered an intimate and chaotic portrait of the football icon, again told entirely through archival material, and premiered at Cannes to widespread acclaim.

Kapadia’s latest feature 2073 (2024) premiered at the Venice Film Festival and reached #1 on HBO Max. A hybrid of archive, drama, and science fiction, it envisions a near-future dystopia shaped by environmental collapse and surveillance capitalism. The film continues Kapadia’s fascination with the intersection of memory, power, and storytelling.

Beyond the big screen, Kapadia has directed episodes of Netflix’s Mindhunter and was Series Director and Executive Producer on AppleTV+’s 1971: The Year Music Changed Everything. He also co-directed and executive produced The Me You Can’t See with Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry, a groundbreaking series exploring mental health through global stories.

He continues to create across formats, from the critically acclaimed short VR film Laika to viral political work like Standard Operating Procedure, featuring Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), which spotlighted the force-feeding of Guantánamo Bay detainees. Kapadia also directs high-profile commercials, including The Tale of Thomas Burberry, starring Domhnall Gleeson and Sienna Miller.

His recent documentary Federer: Twelve Final Days, co-directed with Joe Sabia, premiered at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival, capturing the emotional final chapter of tennis legend Roger Federer’s career.

Kapadia’s work has been showcased at Cannes, Venice, Sundance, Tribeca, and Telluride. He has served on juries for BAFTA, the Sundance Film Festival, the Venice Film Festival (VR), and others. His contributions to cinema have been recognized with honorary doctorates from the Royal College of Art, University of Westminster, University of East London, the National Film & Television School, and the London Film School.

Through a career that spans continents and defies categories, Asif Kapadia has consistently transformed found footage into unforgettable cinema, breathing new life into archival material and redefining what documentary can achieve.