The woman shakes her head in disbelief when a journalist tells her that Sivan has directed half a dozen films including his latest Before The Rains and won a National Award in 1988 for the film he directed the previous year, The Story of Tiblu.

The woman says she loved The Terrorist, a political thriller that Sivan directed in 1999, and which was also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival to glowing reviews.

Now, Sivan is back at the film festival, and anyone who meets him or hears about him wonders how he manages his time. They are astounded at the fact that he has photographed 45 films and documentaries, including benchmark films such as Dil Se.

At the Toronto festival, Sivan also had a short film, Prarambha, which was part of a four-film omnibus that Mira Nair produced. Vishal Bharadwaj, Farhan Akhtar and Nair directed the other segments in the omnibus.

Sivan's film told the story of a young boy who runs away from his village to meet his mother in a nearby big city. The mother is in the hospital in the last stages of AIDS, and the boy has been expelled from the school because of the AIDS stigma.

"I am always interested in stories about conflict and possible resolutions," Sivan says. In Before the Rains, set in the 1930s, he explores a slice of colonial world, the wages of cross-national adultery, and the redemptions some of the characters in the film are trying to reach.

As he prepares for yet another interview at Toronto's Intercontinental Hotel on a balmy Monday morning, he says he would hope that the welcome his film has received at the festival would be infectious and it would go around the world.

More than 20 journalists and TV news anchors have interviewed him in the past 12 hours and yet his enthusiasm to talk about his films is tireless.

Read on as the ace cinematographer and filmmaker discusses his latest film Before the Rains with Arthur J Pais.

In the picture: Ayesha Dharkar in The Terrorist

Also Read: When Kapur leaned on Cate

Next