Anubhav Sinha and Taapsee Pannu’s new film Assi takes the conversation on gender, from their last outing Thappad (2020), much forward. It’s also a more authentic and evolved courtroom drama than their first collaboration, Mulk (2018). In this exclusive interview with SCREEN, Sinha breaks down Assi, the challenge of depicting sexual assault sequences, how he evaded the inherent male gaze, and rounding up another stellar ensemble cast. Assi starts with some graphic scenes of sexual assault. Was it a challenge to bring them to screen? I had no idea what I was going to do with it. I wrote it over two hours at dusk. By the time I got up, it was night. I was disgusted with myself. I mailed it to my co-writer Gaurav Solanki, thinking he’d say it’s very bad. But he said it’s lovely. That’s how it evolved. It was instinctive. We didn’t design it. I really had to go into the depths of my evil to get to that point. That shot where the camera is under the car is …