Rising Star: Asif Kapadia

Bertolucci, Godard, Ozu, Fassbinder - the list of directors who've won the Sutherland Award for most original and imaginative first feature at the London Film Festival includes the greatest names in world cinema. At the last festival in November 2001, a new name was added to the list - a 29-year-old from Hackney, Asif Kapadia.

Based on a Japanese samurai folk tale, The Warrior was four years in the making. A visually stunning film, set at the end of the 19th century, it is the story of a warlord who maintains brutal reign from a crumbling medieval fortress over villages on the edge of the Rajasthan desert. When he sends a gang of ruthless, heavily armed mercenaries to massacre a village that is late with tax payments, Lafcadia, their leader, has a vision compelling him to halt the slaughter. He takes off to the Himalayas with his son, but the boy is captured and murdered. After he is pursued by the remainder of the warriors, Lafcadia finally takes his revenge.

Kapadia wrote the screenplay with Tim Miller, a teacher on the postgraduate film course at the Royal College Of Art. 'Originally we were going to set it in Japan, but I'd already made a short film for my degree in India so it seemed natural to shoot it there,' he says.

Kapadia is the youngest of five children of Gujerati immigrants. He went to Homerton House Secondary School in Hackney and then to Barking College where he studied graphic design. After losing interest in advertising as a career, he took a course in media studies at North London College, which led to jobs as a runner - one of the film industry's poorly paid dogsbodies - and then as a sound recordist and assistant director on TV films and commercials. 'I just loved films. I knew I wanted to work on film, not video.'

He quit work and went to the Newport film school in Wales, then did a degree at the Polytechnic Of Central London before the postgraduate course at the RCA. His graduation film, Indian Tales, based on Indian superstitions, won the best short film award at the Chicago Film Festival. It was shot in his parents' house in Stoke Newington while they were away on holiday.

The Warrior, produced by FilmFour, was made for just £2.5 million. The film has sold well around the world and has already made back more than its original investment. At this rate it may not be long before the boy from Hackney is larging it in Hollywood.