Prabhas and Pooja Hegde will soon be seen romancing one another in the highly anticipated pan-India film Radhe Shyam. Directed by Radha Krishna Kumar, it will release on March 11. The Free Press Journal caught up with the filmmaker for an exclusive conversation.
When asked if releasing the film also in Hindi makes him feel competitive in any way, Radha shares, “Radhe Shyam is not just a love story. We are also talking about an underline philosophy in the film. There’s astrology and its conflict with science. It is about two characters who have an opposing belief system and what happens when they fall in love. I don’t think it is like any other love story. If there’s a comparison to any classic love story, then I would take it as a compliment. Radhe Shyam is a unique and first of its kind film.”
The director has been working on the idea for almost two decades. “I was working as an assistant to the National Award-winning director Chandrashekhar, the central idea of the film is his. I was co-writing with him while I was assisting him. We were writing it since 17-18 years but couldn’t crack the idea, and we left it aside. When I had to do another film with UV Creations, I revisited the idea. The idea of this film made me think about becoming a serious filmmaker,” he explains.
Radha Krishna Kumar with Prabhas | Pic: Instagram/director_radhaa
Radha is all praise for Prabhas. “It is everyone’s dream to work with Prabhas sir. It is not about the choice, it is about the opportunity to direct him. Once he okayed the film, there were no boundaries for my imagination. Whatever I imagined, he could do that since there were no budget constraints also,” he gushes.
Making a magnum opus with a superstar like Prabhas, especially after the pandemic, is not less than a gamble. However, Radha has a different take on it. “I feel this is the much-needed story to know for every individual, and this was my main agenda to make Radhe Shyam. It is not just about two people on screen, but everyone in life must have crossed through these conflicts. However, it is a big responsibility to cater to Prabhas sir’s fans, who always expect beyond and more. After the Baahubali franchise and Saaho, filmmakers want to work with him. So for me personally, it was more like an excitement rather than pressure,” he states.
Radhe Shyam has extensive VFX effects. “The film is set in the 1970s and to keep that vintage thing is a very big task for us. We had to go for multiple location recces. We had to block roads to shoot traffic jam scenes with vintage cars. We used to take permissions 10 days prior to the shoot. And, every scene required VFX to remove dish antennas, towers, buses in the background. The major VFX went into the climax, which went on for two years. We hired the best of technicians from all over the world. A total of 12 countries were involved in the whole VFX process. It took them around nine months to deliver everything,” he says.
The grandeur of the South films, especially now when they have a Hindi release, seems to have reached a new high. “We don’t think in that aspect at all. We make big films with big stars, and that is the practice we all follow by default. It is not about industry integrations that push us to make grand-looking films,” he concludes.
