I pick up subjects that interest me: Michael Winterbottom

It was an engaging discussion on the future of cinema as Prakash Jha, Michael Winterbottom, Naman Ramachandran and Ashoke Viswanathan got together on Sunday morning. When Ashoke pointed out how the Cannes Film Festival didn’t know how to react to a film, which was in the competition section but was made only for online, Naman spoke about his own experience, “I made a film, Brahman Naman, directed by enfant terrible of the city — Q.It was in competition at Sundance and was the treated as the first original film from India on the digital platform. It opened up newer avenues for us.”
About straddling the two worlds of documentary and cinema, Michael said, “When I started working, I made a documentary on Ingmar Bergman. I pick up subjects that interest me. About people making films in less numbers over the years, I feel it’s totally for commercial reasons.” Michael spoke about his
films being “observational”. “It’s the same for docus and films,” he said.