Project SUDDHA, for me, has predominantly been an exercise in creating something from nothing. When we first started thinking about producing the film ourselves, the question I posed myself was ‘Can I find creative solutions to what I do not have?’ The difference between answering this question and cribbing that I do not have a producer or a crane or a star, was the difference between making and not making the film. And I choose to make it.

I shot the film in November 2004 after six months preproduction, took a year and a half to complete it and after sending it to around seventy film festivals for selections, it won the Best Indian Film at Osian’s Cinifan Festival of Asian films at New Delhi in June 2006. Since then the film has been shown in quite a few Film Festivals, in India as well as abroad. Thanks to a little grant from Hubart Bals, The Netherlands, I have been able to manage to show this film in the villages in Coastal Karnataka, the area in which Tulu language is spoken.

The response has been overwhelming. I have got emails from people from countries ranging from Germany to Japan, telling me on how the film reflected their own story! And in whatever little screenings I have had in Coastal Karnataka, the Tulu speaking audiences too seem to have taken a liking to it, calling it as ‘our Tulu film SUDDHA’.

I do owe them a mainstream commercial release.

More articles from the director: www.ramchandrapn.blogspot.com