Anurag Kashyap says leaving Mumbai helped him quit drinking and fight depression

Anurag Kashyap has never been the kind of filmmaker to sit quietly in a corner. But in recent years, he admits he hit a wall. The work slowed, the weight of the industry grew heavy, and his health took a hit. Today, he says the answer to both his depression and his drinking problem was surprisingly simple: leave Mumbai.

How Anurag Kashyap overcame depression by leaving Mumbai

Anurag, known for Black Friday and Gangs of Wasseypur, moved his focus to South Indian cinema. The change brought fresh energy and clearer thoughts. He stopped drinking. He took up exercise and began writing again. It did not happen as a sudden makeover. It grew in small, steady steps after he left the noise of Bollywood.

For him, the relief lay in distance. He felt the Mumbai film circuit was too tangled in image, politics and whispers about his personal life. Down south, he found people who valued his work without fussing over the baggage.

Of course, Anurag hasn’t disappeared from the screen. While his last Hindi directorial Dobaaraa released in 2022, he has since taken up acting offers, including a role in the Malayalam film Rifle Club earlier this year.

His next directorial, Nishaanchi, is set to release in September 2025, introducing Aaishvary Thackeray alongside Vedika Pinto, Monika Panwar, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub and Kumud Mishra. The teaser dropped this month, and the film is already being discussed as a sharp new crime thriller.

It’s not unusual for filmmakers to reinvent themselves, but Anurag’s POV feels more practical than dramatic. He didn’t discover a fancy philosophy or retreat into spiritual silence. He simply changed his environment, took a break from the circles that wore him down, and picked up new habits along the way. For someone often called unpredictable, that choice sounds refreshingly straightforward. Sometimes leaving the city really is the cure.

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