‘I had to exercise extreme realism for Hadinelentu’

SHIKHA DUGGAL
Prithvi Konanur believed he had just two rival films to worry about when he chose to schedule the release of his movie Hadinelentu for the final week of January, according to a ticket aggregator website. However, a number of people followed him after he revealed that his movie would be released in theaters on January 26. As a result, the box office was extremely busy throughout the holiday weekend.
Prithvi, however, is not giving up, as he tells us in this exclusive Tollywood interview with us; he and his crew have made the decision to keep going and have already started modestly with some promotional activities. The writer clarified saying, “Sex tape leak incidents have been reported for a very long period. Our cinema hasn’t yet tackled this issue for some reason, so I thought, ‘Why not? Let’s do this.’ I’m presuming that because it deals with a lot of seriousness, no filmmaker felt inclined to make a movie out of it. I had come up with this concept eight years prior. My film has a distinct feel to it, and I took a long time to fully explore its potential.”
They are visiting campuses and having conversations with students about the movie. In the meantime, the movie centers on two adolescents who record a sex tape that ends up getting leaked: a girl from a lower social class and a boy from an upper-class, wealthy family. Hadinelentu is all about what follows next in terms of how the problem is handled from the standpoint of disparities in social, religious, and gender strata. “I’m not entirely sure if the movie will resonate with young people. They’re accustomed to massy movies! There isn’t any glamour in my film. I didn’t have a stellar cast, nor did I make this movie on a large scale. I have novices aboard. Yes, we are focusing on college students in Hyderabad as our target population.”
Sherlyn Bhosale, Neeraj Matthew, Rekha Kudligi, Bhavani Prakash, Ravi Hebballi, Nagendra Shaa, and others are in the Hadinelentu cast. The scriptwriter goes on, “I didn’t want to bear the penalties of being deceived in any way, which is why it was crucial for me to dedicate a significant amount of years to my research. My goal was to make it appear like a socially conscious film rather than a typical teen comedy. I think I rewrote this movie a hundred times or more! I’m still not satisfied.”
The films Koli Esru and Hadinelentu have been chosen for prestigious film festivals. Furthermore, these films have already won 24 Oscars after receiving over 40 nominations. “For my films, traditional marketing simply doesn’t work,” the Kannada director continued. “I had to exercise extreme realism! Since I don’t want viewers to draw any conclusions on their own, the promotional plan was crucial. The movie might have been a complete bust if I had followed the typical promos. For the movie, we have launched a crowdsourcing website! We are aiming for multiplexes instead of single movie theater screens because they are too costly for my production house’s budget. I have no problem with numerous movies coming out on the same day. Why are we forced to delay the release out of concern over a conflicting movie, and why are the directors unable to help one another? The directors do not compete with one another,” the director claims.
Indian cinema, according to Prithvi Konanur, is far behind Iranian cinema. Prithvi stated in a recent interview that “we must watch Iranian films because they are much better than Indian movies as far as ideas go.” Still, he goes on, “It hasn’t been an easy promotional road. These days, audiences have also grown incredibly sentimental. A small amount of discussion attempted to focus on a religious context as soon as our trailer was out, which was completely unfounded. True, I give less thought to business matters, but as a director, I also want to see a return on my investment. Even though none of my family members contributed money for commercial gain, we nevertheless want the investment to be profitable so that there will always be another opportunity.”