Director Anurag Kashyap has always been one of those to defend Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s film Animal against the criticism it has received since its release in December 2023. Kashyap even took to Instagram earlier this year, referring to Vanga as the “most misunderstood, judged and reviled filmmaker at the moment”. He also called the film “the biggest game changer of Hindi cinema in the longest time and a film whose impact (good or bad) which can’t be denied.”
On the latest episode of his daughter Aaliyah Kashyap's podcast ‘Young, Dumb & Anxious’, Kashyap was asked: “What in the world was the Sandeep Reddy Vanga post?” His daughter expressed disappointment in her father’s appreciation of a film that she called “horrible” and “misogynistic.” Kashyap responded, “I met [Sandeep Reddy Vanga] and I liked him. I like the guy. I’ve had questions of my own and I wanted to talk to him about his film, and I invited him and I had a long five-hour conversation and I like the guy... I always believe in talking to people. I was cancelled after Dev D (2009) by a lot of people for making a ‘misogynistic’ film... I have often seen people isolating someone, attacking someone and that is not the way to be.”
The director added, “This man, what you see is what he is. People may like Animal, they may not like Animal, but Animal is a major tectonic shift in the way films will be made. People will realise its impact in 5-10 years from now. Post Animal, every action movie looks fake.” Kashyap went on to draw a comparison between the action sequences in Animal and Ali Abbas Zafar’s Bade Miyan Chote Miyan, starring Akshay Kumar and Tiger Shroff. “When you see Bade Miyan Chote Miyan, all those flips and fighting, it all looks fake because somehow the action in [Animal] and the use of music in that film had an impact, the technical details in the film had an impact on the audience. That will forever impact cinema.”