Q&A with Filmmaker Anjini Taneja Azhar

Sep 19

Anjini Taneja Azhar is a Los Angeles-based producer, screenwriter, and director who began her career as an actor in Star Trek Into Darkness and HBO’s The Brink. While observing J.J. Abrams on set, she discovered her passion for filmmaking. Since then, she has written and directed award-winning shorts and produced for Fortune 500 companies. Her work has been featured in Forbes, Women Cinemakers, and Ladygunn. Festival accolades include selections at Newport Beach, Tasveer, and LAAPFF. Her 2025 short, Who Are You, Nanu?, won Shore Scripts’ Grand Jury Prize.

This Q&A is part of the Bushwick Film Fest Filmmaker Q&A series

What inspired you to create this film, and how did the initial idea come to you?

‘Who Are You, Nanu?’ is inspired by my grandfather (the titular Nanu). I lived with my grandfather and grandmother ever since I was a child, so I’ve always been quite close to them. They watched me grow up, and in parallel, I watched them grow old. My grandfather, always felt- and still feels- like such a young, kindred spirit deep in his soul. When you watch someone who brimmed with energy and spunk, someone who has always been there, slowly succumb to the turmoils of old age and finally slow down, the reality of how fragile human life is hits you. My mother began having conversations with me a couple years ago about the changes I would begin seeing in my grandfather as he aged throughout my occasional visits home. In a way, this process is like getting to know and learn a whole new person, and this was difficult for me. The grieving process begins early, and for me, it began here. I sat at my desk one night in Los Angeles and recalled my grandfather in the memories in which I cherished him most. I grieved the person he was, in order to reckon with the person he was becoming as he himself navigated what this final era of life looks like. This is how the initial idea for ‘Who Are You, Nanu?’ came to me. I view my grandfather through the eyes of my ten-year-old self. When I look at him, I do not see the delicate ninety one-year-old man in front of me. I see a younger self, before his hair had fully greyed, with rounder cheeks and brighter eyes. I remember the lessons he taught me and the nicknames he called me; the ones he has long forgotten by now. This is how I see him still and how I will always remember him, so I wrote this film through those very eyes of my younger self. I see much of myself in my nine-year-old protagonist, Isha. I always admired my grandfather and his stories of adventure and perseverance, so it only felt right to honour him with a journey of adventure in the film. In that, I wanted the film to feel like a dusty children’s storybook plucked off a shelf. I paired this with the emotional feeling of a soft lullaby sung to me, like the one my grandmother and my mother sang to me as a child that offer the motif of the moon in my film. I’m lucky that my Nanu is still alive and has been able to witness the journey of this film’s making, and now its festival run. It was important to me that he see this process whilst he is still here.

What was your favorite part of making your film? Memories from the process?

There were so many unique memories from filming ‘Who Are You, Nanu?’ from nearly capsizing boats, company moves by river led by the local boatsmen, to experiencing that fiery red sunrise that India is so famous for. Yet, all in all, my favourite part of this process was the crew. To be welcomed into another country and be granted the hard work and dedication from local crew, especially for a short film, is no small thing. My producers Sudhir Sherigar, Vindhya Malik, and their production teams pulled off the impossible and endured perilous temperatures on set with my vision in mind, always. You are as good as your peers, and I was surrounded by the best. My production designers Bindya Chhabria and Arvind Ashok Kumar created a real life moon for me, and atop it, a life-sized home destroyed by an Earthquake. These are no small feats. Through the process, I met lifelong collaborators, like my lead producer and co-star Suchitra Pillai. The beautiful thing about filmmaking is the ‘found family’ you get along the way. With ‘Who Are You, Nanu?’ being a film that every crew member had some personal connection to, I certainly found my new family during this journey. That being said, I do remember how I felt on our morning boat rides on the Ganges traveling to and from location, with the wind hitting my face and the sound of bells, people, and the mantras along the river’s edge that signaled the beginning and end to some of the best days of my life to date.

Can you tell us about the central themes of your film? What message or emotion did you hope to convey?

This film is unconditionally and unabashedly about death and one’s relationship with it. I wanted to let go of this Western idea that to reconnect with one’s deceased has to be a myth or a dream. In my film, my young protagonist, Isha, embarks on a journey with the spectral version of her grandfather’s own nine year-old self, befriending his ghost and forging the relationship with him that she never could whilst he was alive— but it’s never clear to the audience if this journey is a dream or real life. If Isha’s journey feels more like a fantastical experience that very much occurred in her childhood, then so be it. To confine these sort of experiences to dreams, daydreams, or hallucinations is, to me, the acknowledgement that these experiences cannot be true or really occur: but why can’t they? The beauty of growing up in South Asian culture is the inherent, given belief in the spiritual and supernatural, the otherworldly, and not particularly confined to religion (as I’m not religious myself). Ghosts, spirits, the dead as souls wandering about— these are all real to us through our fables and folklore. I wanted this to be explored in my film. I wanted to explore grief through the genre lens of magical realism to create a generational take of my own: what if Isha really did have an experience with the ghost of her grandfather when she was a little girl? The line between reality and the fantastic is blurred with this genre, which felt like the absolute fitting approach to a film that explores grief through the eyes of a child.

Were there any films or directors that influenced your approach to this project?

Of course, one of the greats of South Asian cinema, Satyajit Ray was a large influence on this film. The way he captures the richness of culture and a slight feeling of wonder whilst staying grounded in a hyperrealistic story is to be admired greatly. It was specifically the way in which Ray directs dialogue and banter between characters that I felt so inspired to study for my film. I believe in the power of the portrait. I love faces, close-ups, extreme close-ups, the stories told in every little imperfection of skin. The use of close ups and portrait shots from filmmakers such as Satyajit Ray and Ingmar Bergman were a massive influence. Of course, ‘Who Are You, Nanu?’ is far more vibrant, colourful, even more robust with a sort of whimsy than the works of the former, however it’s the feeling these directorial choices evoke that struck me for my film. When writing the film, I had watched ‘This Is Not A Burial, It’s A Resurrection,’ by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese— I was captivated immediately. I still believe it’s one of the most tonally and visually beautiful films I’ve seen this past decade, and it largely influenced the way I wrote certain landscapes and imagery. For me, I’ve always been inspired by old cinema and the methods of practical filmmaking. I am not so interested in the innovations of certain technologies that take away from the physical craftsmanship that goes into filmmaking. The building, painting, cranking, decorating: these are invaluable. I brought a lot of these from the older films I love to my film. Our destroyed house on the moon was completely practical, built on a soundstage without any VFX. We shot on 35mm film stock. The purring of a camera loaded with film as it rolls instills a certain discipline and attentiveness on set that I feel at home with. The textures and softness of analog resonate with me deeply as a filmmaker, and I believe I would shoot on film every time if given the opportunity. The only time we really employed VFX was when it was a matter of safety, such as our snake or when Isha is on fire. In this way, the methods in cinema of the past influenced me greatly. I hope to carry this wish me as I grow in this career.

Why is filmmaking important to you? Why is it important to the world?

Filmmaking feels like a part of me. Art, storytelling, film— these are the only ways I can truly comprehend the life around me. Cinema feels, to me, like a soulmate. It is the purest form of humanity. Through filmmaking, we get to be explorers, lovers, darers, and everything in between. The culture around cinema has changed, and going to the theatre is not quite the same unfortunately with cell phones and everything, but it was once such a beautiful thing. To sit in a room with a hundred and some strangers, all connected to the same story yet each taking away something different and personal in a sort of silent togetherness is really one of the most intimate experiences. Rarely can something bring us together in such a fashion than film. I do believe the way I perceive my experiences are in the forms of stories and characters. Film was my way as a child to dream and become something new every weekend. It brought my family and I together, and often during times of turmoil, watching a film together was our refuge. Filmmaking is important to me because it opens our eyes to humanity in all corners of the world, across all spans of time, and it connects us. At the same time filmmakers, like all artists, are disruptors. They must be brave and unafraid of the rules of society. Film is a personal medium: you write or direct what speaks to your heart because if you don’t, you will be unable to make a full night’s sleep, even if it raises controversy. Sometimes, the most personal story can be the most important one, and bring forth change. Filmmaking is important to the world because it must be brave, no matter the story. This bravery is what it means to be human.

Films are lasting artistic legacies; what do you want yours to say?

This is a heavy question, and in a way, I am still discovering the answer. I believe deeply in the lost art of obsession and how this drives artists. I admire what filmmakers used to be: misfits, rockstars, outcasts that only found a home in the world of cinema. It wasn’t something ‘fun’ to try but a necessity of life, just like water and air. I found a home in cinema because this is exactly how I feel. I hope my legacy shows a filmmaker following in these footsteps, driven by a love of the craft and a hunger to only get better— consumed by obsession, reverence, and little bit of madness. I hope I am able to be the type of artist I grew up admiring and create the ‘Hollywood’ I dreamed of around me, even if it’s not exactly the ‘Hollywood’ that is present today. I hope with each film, an audience can watch me becoming braver and more courageous, whilst refining my voice as a filmmaker… discovering who I am. I hope my artistic legacy inspires others not to feel swayed by trends or zeitgeists; art is inherently timeless when it comes from the heart. I hope my artistic legacy shows someone who is curious and taking the form of an explorer through film. The rest in terms of legacy, I suppose, is still of question to me. I believe this answer is probably excavated little by little throughout one’s life, so I hope to find it somewhere along the way.

How do you feel about your film being screened in front of a festival audience?

No matter the festival, screening in front of an audience is absolutely terrifying. My film screened at Bushwick Film Festival in 2023, and I’ve grown so much from then to now, so it’s especially an honour to share this growth with Bushwick. The film is a piece of me, my heart, my family, and perspective on my own experiences. It’s such a personal thing to share, but this is the natural progression of a film’s life after completion. It’s a ‘good’ terrifying, to screen at a festival. More likely than not, a festival audience is coming with a sense of excitement to see your film, so there’s already an overwhelming amount of support. Still, when sharing such a personal story, you hope some little part of it resonates with an audience enough that they feel inclined to take a piece of it home themselves. It’s scary, yes, but such an honour. Bushwick Film Festival has some incredible audiences and takes such good care of their filmmakers. It’s an exciting thing, a terrifying thing, but there’s so much gratitude that I hold all at once. I couldn’t thank Bushwick enough for recognizing my vision with this film and seeing something special in it.

This Q&A is part of the Bushwick Film Fest Filmmaker Q&A series

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