The filmmaker from Dayalpur

A boy who was not allowed to watch films until he was 15 is now taking his own film to the London Film Festival. The journey from Dayalpur, a small village in Faridabad, to the prestigious BFI London Film Festival may sound improbable, even to Ankur Hooda himself. His latest docu-drama, ‘The Calf Doll’, made in his ancestral village on a modest budget and without institutional backing, has been selected for screening at the festival. But for Hooda, the journey to London is less about an arrival than about a long, uncertain search — one that began with books, took an unexpected turn away from medicine and eventually brought him back to the ru…