Anurag Kashyap

Claim Page

Kashyap was born on 10 September 1972 to a Rajput family in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh. His father Sri Prakash Singh is a retired Chief Engineer of the Uttar Pradesh Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited and was posted in Obra Thermal Power Station in Sonbhadra district near Varanasi. He did his early schooling in Green School Dehradun and, age eight onwards, at the Scindia School in Gwalior. Some of the locations used in Gangs of Wasseypur are also influenced from his own old house where he himself lived with his parents, sister, Anubhuti Kashyap, and brother, Abhinav Kashyap. Abhinav is also a filmmaker, who made his directorial debut with the masala blockbuster, Dabangg (2010). Anubhuti has been his assistant in most of his films. She made her directorial debut with Doctor G (2022), a medical campus comedy, starring Ayushmann Khurrana, Rakul Preet Singh, Shefali Shah and Sheeba Chaddha.

Owing to his desire to become a scientist, Kashyap went to Delhi for his higher studies and enrolled himself into a zoology course at the Hansraj College (University of Delhi); he graduated in 1993. He then eventually joined the street theatre group, Jana Natya Manch; and did many street plays. The same year, his couple of friends "urged [him] to catch a de Sica retrospective" at the International Film Festival of India. In ten days, he saw 55 films at the festival, and Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves was the film that influenced him the most.

Kashyap was first married to film editor Aarti Bajaj, with whom he has a daughter, Aaliyah Kashyap. They divorced in 2009. He later married actress Kalki Koechlin, whom he first met during the making of Dev D, at her maternal home in Ooty. In 2013, Kashyap and Koechlin announced that: "they are taking time apart from their more than two-year-old marriage." In May 2015, they were divorced at the Bandra family court in Mumbai.

When asked about his religious views, Kashyap replied: "I am an atheist. Cinema is the only religion I believe in."

On 3 March 2021, the Income Tax Department raided 28 locations in Mumbai and Pune in connection with tax evasion by firm Phantom Films connected to Anurag Kashyap. Income Tax Department said it found a discrepancy of around ₹300 crore which the Kashyap company official has not been able to explain.

Kashyap found his production company Anurag Kashyap Films in 2009, which is managed by Guneet Monga. The companies' first film was the critical hit Udaan (2010), which was screened in the Un Certain Regard category at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Since then, he has produced a number of projects including Shaitan (2011), Chittagong (2012), Aiyyaa (2012), Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana (2012) and Shorts (2013). He has also co-produced a number of films that have gone on to film festivals, but are yet to release theatrically, including Michael, Peddlers and Monsoon Shootout. In 2012, Kashyap produced The Last Act, India's first collaborative feature film from twelve directors to make ten-minute short films, with each film being a part of a larger story written by him.

In 2013, his company co-produced the critically acclaimed drama The Lunchbox, which was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language; along with the biographical drama Shahid. The same year Kashyap, with Viacom 18 Motion Pictures co-produced five short films with the theme of 'India is Visual Journey'. The short films were Moi Marjaani, Chai, Hidden Cricket, Geek Out and The Epiphany. He also served as the creative director in the Amitabh Bachchan starrer TV series Yudh (2014), and subsequently presented two documentary film's, The World Before Her (2012) and Katiyabaaz (2014).

In 2011 Kashyap co-founded his director-driven production company Phantom Films with partnership from Vikas Bahl, Vikramaditya Motwane and Madhu Mantena. The companies first film was the period romance Lootera (2013), starring Ranveer Singh and Sonakshi Sinha. Based O. Henry's short story, The Last Leaf, the film was critically acclaimed.

Kashyap at the success meet of Imaikaa Nodigal in 2018.

He then went on to collaborate with Karan Johar's Dharma Productions to produce the romantic comedy Hasee Toh Phasee (2014). The film starring Parineeti Chopra and Sidharth Malhotra was directed by the debutant Vinil Mathew. Kashyap then co-edited and co-produced the comedy drama Queen, starring Kangana Ranaut. The film was a critical and commercial success, it also won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi.

In 2015, Kashyap co-produced Anushka Sharma's production debut NH10, and the sex comedy Hunterrr. Both films proved to be successes. Masaan, was Phantom's fourth release of the year. The film won the FIPRESCI Award and the Promising Future award at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. The final release of Phantom of 2015 was Shaandaar, which proved to be a box-office flop. In October the same year, Kashyap teamed up with Ridley Scott and Richie Mehta for Google, as the executive producer for the documentary India in a Day. The project was for people across India to film a snapshot of their day and upload it on Google's official website.

The following year, Kashyap collaborated again with Ekta Kapoor to produce Udta Punjab (2016), a crime drama by the director Abhishek Chaubey that documents the substance abuse endemic in the Indian state of Punjab. Udta Punjab generated controversy when the Central Board of Film Certification demanded extensive censorship before its theatrical release, citing that the portrayal of Punjab in it was negative. After Kashyap filed a lawsuit against the board, the Mumbai High Court cleared the film for exhibition with a single scene cut. His company, Phantom Films, also produced a Gujarati film Wrong Side Raju, that same year. Kashyap co-produced Haraamkhor (2017), the survival drama Trapped (2016) and the superhero film Bhavesh Joshi Superhero (2018).

Phantom Films was dissolved in October 2018, largely in response to the sexual assault allegation on Vikas Bahl by a former Phantom employee, which was reported in 2015. Kashyap, and the other three founders issued statements on Twitter confirming the company's disbanding and moving on to independent projects. In 2020, Kashyap launched another production company titled Good Bad Films with partnership from Dhruv Jagasia and Akshay Thakker. Their maiden production was Choked.