It is difficult to condense the life of Shakuntala Devi — glorious in its achievements and fraught with its share of troubles — into a two-hour story. But at the onset, director Anu Menon knew that her film would go beyond her muse's magic with math. "I knew I wanted to tell the story through her daughter's perspective," says the director, sitting in her London home, over a Zoom call. Less than a week away from the release of Shakuntala Devi on Amazon Prime Video, she is elated that her efforts of the past three years have come to fruition.

Fascinated with Devi's unique journey that took her from a modest family in Bengaluru to around the world, co-writer Nayanika Mahtani and she were developing a script around the math wiz. However, Menon believes that the story truly came alive when they met her daughter, Anupama Banerjee, in 2016. "My agent found Anupama. Despite being far removed from Bollywood, I think she was receptive to me because we lived in the same city. Nayanika and I met her at a café where she came with her husband and two daughters," she recounts.