His father, Devendra Nath Mishra (died 2020), was a mathematics professor who served as the 19th vice-chancellor of Banaras Hindu University and co-founded the Lucknow Film Society.

[1] His grandfather, Dwarka Prasad Mishra (1901–1988), was a politician and journalist who served as the 4th chief minister of Madhya Pradesh.

After spending 18 months under the tutelage of theatre director Badal Sircar, Mishra moved to Pune, where Sudhanshu was a student at the Film and Television Institute of India; though he never studied at the institute himself, he spent the majority of his free time there and later credited Sudhanshu with teaching him much of his filmmaking knowledge.

[3] Mishra moved to Mumbai in 1980 and started his career as an assistant director and scriptwriter in Kundan Shah's comedy Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron (1983).

Indian film critic Mayank Shekhar said, "This is a subtle, mature satire, rather than [a] LOL comedy of manners (would've enjoyed some of the latter too) [...] in all its overt simplicity, this is also a complex story — about failure, first; and on the underclass, only later.