New Delhi, Oct. 5 -- It's been eight years since Daniel Day-Lewis announced his retirement from acting and said he wanted to "explore the world in a different way."

But the big-screen absence of the actor many would peg as the greatest one alive ends with "Anemone," a new film directed by his son, Ronan Day-Lewis. The two of them wrote it together. What began as something small, with no real ambition, grew until a full feature film and Day-Lewis' long-awaited return to movies.

"It saddened me that I had perhaps ruled myself out of that when I decided to work on something else for a while," Day-Lewis said in an interview alongside his son. "As we progressed through it, and it seemed less and less possible to contain it, like two fellas i...