Every independent filmmaker we spoke to agreed on one thing that defined their work: ‘the indie spirit’. Yet no one was able to describe it. Maybe because it cannot be described in words. So we asked photographer Prasad Naik to shoot five independent filmmakers at his studio in Mumbai. These filmmakers have all made films that have been in the news this year. Naik spoke to them about the highs and lows of making the movies they did and clicked away while they were talking- in an attempt to capture one expression from each filmmaker that would define what independent filmmaking meant to him. “I didn’t ask any of the filmmakers for this expression,” says Naik. “I tried to absorb what they were saying and translate how they feel about their journey through my photographs.”