‘Amy’ Director Asif Kapadia Recalls Three-Act Quest to Becoming an Oscar Winner

Asif Kapadia described his filmmaking career as a three-act story during an appearance at the MIA Market in Rome. He traced it from discovering filmmaking as a student, through years of learning on film sets while earning a living, to becoming an Oscar-winning director with greater freedom to choose his projects.

Kapadia said his fiction-film training shaped his approach to documentaries, which he sees as genre films: *Senna* as an action film, *Amy* as a music-driven Bollywood film, and *Diego Maradona* as a gangster film. His films rely on archival and home-video footage to build character and drama; for *Amy*, he negotiated creative control with the singer’s label and family. One scene uses a previously unseen 2006 studio recording of Amy Winehouse performing “Back to Black”, where she completed two takes before leaving.