Sudhir Mishra

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

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.