BVFF 2023 | Krishna DK interview: On taking ‘The Family Man’ to Northeast and self-censorship

Krishna DK speaks about why the long-format is yet to penetrate non-Hindi markets, a possible Chaar Cut Atmaram spin-off, self-censorship in OTT platforms, and more

The golden run of filmmaker duo Raj & DK and writer Suman Kumar with The Family Man, Farzi, and Guns & Gulaabs represents the zeitgeist of the pan-Indian cinema movement more than even most pan-Indian features. Hailing from Andhra Pradesh, Raj & DK teamed up with Suman, a Bangalorean now awaiting the release of his debut feature film in Tamil, to create The Family Man, headlined by the Bihar-born Delhiite Manoj Bajpayee. Because each season of the show deals with a political issue concerning a specific region of the country, actors from other film industries organically find their way into the cast; this, of course, is a breather from makers casting regional stars simply to pander to the ‘pan-India’ tag. The story flowing and connecting other parts of the country also makes it more attractive as a project, especially at a time when film industries other than Bollywood are yet to find faith in long-format storytelling on streaming platforms.

On Saturday, at the recently concluded 8th edition of the Brahmaputra Valley Film Festival in Guwahati, Assam, Krishna DK participated in a masterclass on the art of telling stories through the longer format and, along with Suman, in a discussion titled ‘Mastering the Evolving Landscape of Web Series’. With the upcoming third season of The Family Man moving the story to the region, the filmmaker will be travelling more and more to the Northeast, and he does sound excited. “We are now in development, and over the next few months, we will come here, interact with people, explore the culture and incorporate them back into our script,” says DK, in this conversation with us at the film festival.

Excerpts:

I love the idea of this festival. I think it’s important for every region to have an event like this, in which filmmakers and other film industry people interact with the local talent and BVFF is providing that for the entire northeastern region of the country. It’s great because if not for such efforts, many creative minds here would have to travel to Delhi or Bombay to interact with anybody.

The idea of The Family Man has always been to have a balanced approach to everything without necessarily taking sides. There’s a clear demarcation between a protagonist and an antagonist in our stories, but there is a nuanced approach to the subject, and in that, we try to be balanced to the best of our abilities.

I think it’s the function of the number of players. With feature films, there are equal opportunities at the box office in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and so on, and the sizes of the box office are huge, Hindi arguably being a little larger just by its popularity. With series, the OTT platforms enjoy a strong subscriber base in the Hindi market and they’re starting to expand to other languages down south. Once these platforms get a foothold in the southern states with a good subscriber base, we can see more creators trying the format.

I think it might be a matter of two to three years for the format to pick up, and we might see more high-profile filmmakers and actors start making series because a series with higher production value also attracts higher calibre.