Shoojit Sircar prefers football over filmmaking

Filmmaker Shoojit Sircar says he enjoys playing football so much that if the government agrees to give him subsidy and asks him to play the sport, he would quit making movies.

"I am an incidental filmmaker. It is not my first love. Sports is my first love. I even train young footballers. I still don't belong to this industry. I stay in Kolkata and come here (for work). Just because I have nothing to do, I make films. So, if the government gives me subsidy and asks me to play football, I will leave filmmaking," the "Vicky Donor" fame director said during a panel discussion at the ongoing Jio MAMI 18th Mumbai Film Festival with Star here on Sunday.

"Football is my lifeline. Filmmaking...I am still learning," said the former accountant.

National Award-winning filmmaker and composer Vishal Bhardwaj, another panellist, said that he became a director so that he could employ himself as a composer.

"I want to keep making songs. But when I started making films, I realised this is the best profession," he said. He enjoys making characters on paper, seeing them on the sets in the form of actors, editing, telling stories and engaging people.

Their co-panellist Zoya Akhtar, who has helmed movies like "Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara" and "Luck By Chance", says she wanted to be a lawyer at one point of time.

"I wanted to do law. Had I not been a filmmaker, I would have studied law for sure. But when I hit my late teens, I just knew. I was already writing and I was a film geek. Filmmaking was inevitable," said the daughter of renowned lyricist and screenwriter Javed Akhtar.