Unlike Senna and Amy Winehouse, Maradona's struggles are internal

Indian-origin British filmmaker Asif Kapadia said that he didn't want to make ar documentary after his BAFTA-winning Senna on late Brazilian motor-racing champion Ayrton Senna. director, whose Diego Maradona on legendary Argentinian footballer released Friday, said it is "accidental" that he ended up doing a trilogy of sorts on child geniuses, second being "Amy on late British singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse.

"When I did 'Senna' in 2010, it was a one off. I've been making feature films previously, so 'Senna' was like sport and a good opportunity coming along so I thought it'd be nice to do something different.

"It was a challenge in a way to come up with a new way of telling story. That's what I thought was interesting about it, this idea of t having interviews and making it a documentary but in style of a feature film. It was a big hit. It did really well everywhere. And n I thought, 'Okay, that's it. I'm never going to make ar one', Kapadia told PTI in an interview.

n Amy happened, which earned him an Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2016, along with best documentary BAFTA and Grammy for best music film. London-based Kapadia said documentary on Winehouse, who died at 27 due to alcohol poisoning, was like telling story of somebody that could have lived on his street in Camden, where he lived for 10 years.

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"I didn't want to do ar sport film. I got offered a lot and I said to m all including 'Maradona' after 'Senna'. n 'Amy' comes along. I'm from rth London, that became more personal as a film about where I'm from."

Diego Maradona is a film on a subject who is alive and focuses on Argentine football legend's turbulent and triumphant seven-year stint with Italian professional football club Societa Sportiva Calcio (SSC) Napoli, which he joined in 1984 for a n  record fee. director, a passionate football fan, lived with idea of film for 25 years, from time he was a film student and read a book on him. It was almost like doing a gangster film, Kapadia said, in a hat-tip to one of his heroes, director Martin Scorsese.

Diego Maradona, distributed by PVR Pictures in India, captures life and times of genius through his triumphs and tribulations of 1980s and early 1990s. It was a period during which Maradona saw great highs, including Argentina's 1986 World Cup victory, and lows, which included messy run-ins with authority.

Kapadia, 47, said that Amy and Senna had obvious kind of external rivals. With Maradona, battle was "internal". Before he interviewed legend, he was warned by many people that he was going to talk to one of biggest liars in world for football is a game of mind.

director interviewed Maradona for four to five times with foot of nine hours and witnessed two halves of his personality 'Diego' and 'Maradona' emerge. It was always like 'What's reason he's doing this stuff? Whenever we talked to people and did research, it was that body makes this guy do anything. It is all him.

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"A lot of people of alluded to it during research and interviews. re was his personal trainer, one of key characters in film, who during my interview with him, kind of literally split it. It's almost like he is bipolar or has split personality. re's this character Diego, n re's this character Maradona.

Diego was a sweet guy, who loves to talk and hang around, but Maradona was persona he created to deal with journalists, fame, and kind of ego, which Kapadia thought "could be interesting". "It suddenly made sense of who he was," he said.

filmmaker said that when audience hears Maradona's voice in film, it is from interviews that he did with him. Kapadia believes he got veteran to dig deeper and talk about things he'd never spoken about. "My job was to try and get him to deal with some of difficult things. He doesn't look back. He doesn't have any regrets. He doesn't ever feel like he's ever made a mistake. It's like rest of world is wrong.

"In film, I deal with a section of his life when he was playing in Italy, which for me is most important part of his life which forms him, where he becomes best player in world, where he becomes this kind of iconic figure, but it's also where all of his personal problems begin."

issue with his previous documentaries, he said, was estate or family were interested in seeing film before it released. But it's never expected with Maradona, who is yet to see film.

"As guy is still alive you would assume he and his people would want to see film, but it's opposite. And that's classic Diego Maradona, he will always do opposite of everything you expect."

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documentary premiered at Out of Competition at 72nd Cannes Film Festival in legend's absence and because Maradona was always on opposite side of world, re was only so much that could be done. Before its debut in India, film released in Argentina on direct TV, director said, adding Maradona might have seen it. "We may see his reaction on Instagram and he will be commenting on it probably quite soon," he said. Next, Kapadia said he is going to do something "completely different".

Last year, it was anunced that Kapadia and filmmaker Ridley Scott are teaming up to adapt Yuval ah Harari's international best-seller "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind".

"I don't kw yet. I'm reading and thinking. I'm kind of putting a few things toger, but I'm t planning to jump into something straight away. "Back to ar (feature) movie again, it's been a while. re's something going on. I mean, it's too early. It's still in middle of stuff right w."

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