By News18,Yatamanyu Narain

Copyright news18

It’s been over a year since the internet was set ablaze by a single photograph — acclaimed filmmaker Anurag Kashyap standing arm-in-arm with director Sandeep Reddy Vanga. Posted on social media, the image came with an effusive note from Kashyap, who not only lauded Vanga’s blockbuster Animal starring Ranbir Kapoor, but also defended the man behind the camera as someone frequently misunderstood by the media and his critics.
But while the post earned Kashyap a wave of attention, it was the responses from his long-time friends and collaborators that truly fanned the flames. Fellow filmmakers Neeraj Ghaywan and Varun Grover — with whom Kashyap has long been associated as part of a progressive creative circle — weighed in bluntly. Ghaywan dropped a curt “Cringe,” while Grover simply wrote, “No.” Their stark disapproval triggered a digital firestorm, sparking think pieces, Twitter threads, and heated debates on whether personal admiration could be divorced from cinematic choices.
Now, Kashyap has addressed the moment head-on. In an exclusive conversation with SCREEN, he revealed how the backlash immediately pushed him to pick up the phone. “Yeah, absolutely. And no, I can’t share what we spoke about as it is a very private conversation, because I spoke to him about my private conversation with Vanga, which I could share with him, but it’s not for public consumption. For me those are trust things you don’t break,” he said, underscoring the personal lines he refuses to cross.
More importantly, Kashyap used the episode to critique what he sees as a dangerous cultural trend. “I have a big problem with cancel culture. Whether you agree or disagree with a person, cancelling a person like that sometimes gets to me,” he noted, drawing a clear line between disagreement and erasure.
Interestingly, Varun Grover himself had already offered his side of the story earlier this year in an interview with Lallantop. Reflecting on the exchange, Grover recalled Kashyap’s instinct to address the issue directly: “The special thing about Anurag Kashyap is that he has an open heart and mind. He immediately talks, immediately tries to understand you. So, within half an hour, he called and said, ‘Explain to me. What happened? What’s the problem here?’ So we talked, and he agreed, he said, ‘Yeah, you’re in the right.’ Even later, I went to meet him and we’ve talked about it many times since then.”
The candid admissions from both men suggest that while the internet may thrive on division, real-life conversations often offer a more nuanced middle ground.
As for the directors at the centre of this debate: Anurag Kashyap is readying his latest thriller Nishaanchi, which hits theatres this Friday, while Sandeep Reddy Vanga is hard at work on Spirit, his much-anticipated collaboration with Prabhas.