At 21, Anupriya Nagar invested all the money she had earned and saved from three years of part-time jobs in the UK into her first film, Hanuman Ansh, despite having no filmmaking experience. A graduate of economics from the University of Bath, she had even got a job in Zurich before returning to India in 2025 and eventually getting involved with the film as a co-producer. “I feel like age is just a number,” she says. “My only focus was to bring Maharaj ji’s (Neem Karoli Baba) stories to the younger audience, to Gen Z. We get to know about such things through foreigners. I myself got to know about him through a foreigner and, being the youth of India, I was ashamed that I was not getting to know about him through his own story.”
For her, backing Hanuman Ansh was never about financial returns. “This was the risk I was willing to take. I earned this money in the three years that I studied in the UK, doing part-time jobs. When I came across Maharaj ji at a beautiful juncture of my life, I just wanted to get into this project. I didn’t know what I could contribute because I had not done filmmaking, but I was ready to give my heart and soul to it. The project needed some investment at that particular time, so I said, ‘Whatever I have, I’m ready to give you guys.’”
Her family initially worried about the decision. “My father was protective. He said, ‘You don’t know much about filmmaking and you know how the industry is. You’re so young.’ But when I told him I was making a film on a noble saint and narrated the story, he was fine. They’ve been with me through thick and thin. In fact, I think they do more publicity for the film than I do!”
The film’s box office journey has since surprised everyone. After opening on 300 screens and dropping to just 30 on its eighth day, it eventually expanded to over 1,500 screens, and now releasing internationally. It has also touched the ₹100 crore figure. “My box office is people knowing about Maharaj ji,” she says. “But the collections reassure me that people are interested in this kind of content. People are making an effort to get his darshan in theatres.”
The film ends with a promise of a sequel, and Anupriya confirms it will happen, “We are not going to dishearten our viewers. Maharaj ji has given us so much in abundance regarding the box office, so we don’t have a choice but to make this.”
More importantly, she wants the sequel to retain the simplicity of the first film. “Our film was supposed to be made in ₹2 crore. If we had made the same film in ₹10 crore, it wouldn’t have come out this way. The rawness and simplicity came from the low budget, and we will definitely keep that in mind,” Anupriya ends.
