The National Award for best Kannada film for Thithi couldn’t have come at a better time, says its young director, Raam Reddy. The film is finally poised for a theatrical release in the beginning of May.
“We’re actually in the thick of the film’s release. In a week the film’s poster will be out, and then the trailer. We’ll start with a release all over Karnataka and then do it nationwide,” says Raam. The film won the National Award for Best Kannada film at the 63 National Film Awards announced yesterday.
Suresh Productions from Hyderabad, that mostly releases “commercial” films, has picked up the distribution rights for the film.
Raam admits that the film’s team hadn’t expected Thithi to have such commercial potential. “I didn’t have much expectation from the business of it. That is the advantage of being young and fearless I guess. We made it with a certain amount of idealism — we only wanted to make a warm film. The comedy rose organically from the film; I’ve seen audience having a good laugh. The idea was to keep the narrative engaging. And that is what really worked. Thithi is not a slow film.” Raam says he wasn’t even expecting the film to make it to the film festival circuit.
A film set in rural India, and seeing the death of a 101 year old man “Century Gowda” from the point of view of three generations in a family isn’t exactly the formula for a potboiler. Which is why, Raam says that if the film works commercially, “we believe it will be truly rebelling against commercial form. I hope it proves that there are other ways to tell a story — without breaking narrative with a song, and without a star image attached to your characters.” But rebellion wasn’t the intention with which the film was made. “We only wanted people to enter a different world.”
The film has got great word going for it, and that’s something Ram acknowledges as having worked for Thithi . “For every film, and more so films like ours, people have to take a chance on it, tell others. That’s one of the reasons we let the film grow before releasing it. Because otherwise the economics of the industry is against us — not for any other reason except that this is an atypical film.”
