After working as writer for films like Mahanati, Manamantha and Radhe Shyam, Padmavathi Malladi is now making her debut as director with Gandhi Tatha Chettu. Sukumar’s daughter Sukriti plays the main protagonist in this one and Padmavathi talks about the project and how she gets support from a big production house for her small film.
suresh kavirayani
Popular director Sukumar’s daughter Sukriti Bandreddi is making her debut as an actress with the film Gandhi Thatha Chettu. Padmavathi Malladi is also making her debut as a director with this film which is releasing on January 24. The director talks about this project and how she roped in Sukriti. Now big production house Mythri Movie Makers is releasing this film.
Padmavathi was born and brought up in Hyderabad, completed her BSc in Bio-Technology, MBA and also did her PG Diploma in Quality Control. “I used to write short stories and also some poems. My friend showed one of my stories to Jil director Radhakrishna and he introduced me to Chandrasekhar Yeleti,” said Padmavathi. That’s how she joined films for the first time by writing for the film Manamantha with Chandrasekhar. “I learnt a lot when I worked with him,” she said. She next worked for the film Radhe Shyam with director Radhakrishna. “At the same time I got a chance to work with director Nag Ashwin for Mahanati,” she said.
Padmavathi’s mother is a film lover and used to watch all films on the first day. “That’s how I get interested in films,” she said. Then she wrote dialogues for ‘Choosi Choodangane’ (2020) which her friend Sesha Sindhu directed. Then she wrote dialogues for ‘Ammu’ (2022) and also worked in ‘Brinda’ web series.
One of her friends thought of a small love story between a tree and a boy and Padmavathi connected to that point. “I like greenery and trees, so I want to tell the present generation about non-violence. So, I developed a story about a girl, her grandfather and a tree. How a girl saved a village tree through non-violence is the basic story. There are a lot of emotions and a message is also there, but it is not an art film, it is a commercial cinema,” she said. Her friend and director Sindhu Rao heard the story and she liked it very much. She collected money through some crowd-funding and also from others. “We planned with a limited budget and we went according to our plan,” she said.
After writing the story she is searching for a thirteen year-old girl to play the main role in her film. “I auditioned hundreds of girls, but some of them didn’t agree to shave their head. Though some agreed, their acting was poor. At that time, my friend Sindhu had seen Sukumar’s daughter Sukriti at a film premiere and sent her photos to me. After seeing her photo, I fixed her as my girl,” said Padmavathi. She then messaged Sukumar and approached Sukriti.
“We did nearly two months’ workshop with her in acting, dialogue delivery and body language. Location is a big task for us as we search in many places and finally zeroed in Rangampet near Nizamabad and we found a tree also,” she said. When asked why can’t go for make-up instead of shaving her head? “Yes, we can use prosthetics, but it takes so much time and is also very costly. In my film, the girl is very strong and she doesn’t care about these things, so Sukriti accepted it and did it very well,” she added.
Padmavathi says that music is one of the important ones for her film. “If you close your eyes and listen to the music of my film, you can understand the story. It has come out very well.” “Sukumar’s wife Tabitha was there on the sets throughout the shoot. On the second day I asked Tabitha, ‘can you please present this film?’ and she accepted immediately,” said Padmavathi.
They completed the film within their budget with Sindhu Rao as producer. Once the film was over, Sukumar had seen it and did he give any advice or changes to it? “No, he told me ‘this is not my genre, so whatever you think you go with that and I believe in you’. So, he completely supported me,” she said. It is Sukumar’s advice to send this film for Film Festivals. “It won many awards at the International Film Festival and earned so much respect. Now, it should earn audience applause after its release here and I am eagerly waiting for the result.” She added that though the film won many awards, it is not an art film; it is a commercial film with a message of non-violence. “I wanted to tell through the film that non-violence is important not only for human beings but also for nature,” she said.
Padmavathi worked as a writer for a few films, but she never watched shooting on the sets. “I mostly interacted with actors with my dialogues. So, here I have a bond with senior director Singeetham Srinivasa Rao and when I told him about my directorial debut, he gave me a two-day crash course, which I followed as it is,” said Padmavathi. “It really helped me and I implemented whatever he told me,” she said.
The other interesting thing about this film is she didn’t take any junior artistes for this film. “The local villagers acted in the film and they did very natural acting,” she said. She also mentioned that Anand Chakrapani as grandfather and Rag Mayur as villain gave a stunning performance in the film. Thanikella Bharani gave voiceover for the tree.
About her future project, she said she has a few stories, but at present is waiting for this film’s release. “I will decide what genre I should take after this film’s release,” she said.
