Twelve years after his critically acclaimed film, Well Done Abba (2010), filmmaker Shyam Benegal is back with another project, Mujib: The Making Of A Nation. Ask what kept him away from directing a film for so long and the National Award-winning director says, “For an independent filmmaker [like me], two things are important — to have a subject that excites you enough to be inspired and make a film and when you find a subject, you need to have people who put their money into it, which isn’t always easy.”

Benegal feels the boom in the TV space impacted Indian cinema, which made him take it slow, professionally. “With the growth of television, the cinema audience shrank. And then came a time when TV spread far and wide, and things went all over the place. Everyone had to take a pause, as we weren’t able to make the kind of films we wanted to,” says the 87-year-old director.

Benegal laments the dearth of theatrical releases today and says the surge of OTT has a role to play in that. “There was a time when India would make the maximum number of films [globally] and even I would make three movies in two years. In fact, I had also made two films in a year. But today, movies are being made for the web space, too. So the number of theatrical releases have gone down,” ends the Mandi (1983) director.