Director Phanideep: ‘Ustaad’ is about a boy, his bike and his dreams

Interview: Sri Simha Koduri and Kavya Kalyanram’s Telugu movie ‘Ustaad’ is about a boy, his bike and his dreams, says director Phanideep

Sometime in 2014, when Phanideep gazed at the street from his balcony on the third floor of a residential colony in Hyderabad, he spotted a boy trying to fly a kite. He took a photograph. “I was also a dreamer, like him,” he recalls. That image of a boy wanting to conquer the skies, coupled with his love for bikes, sowed the seed for the story of Ustaad, the Telugu feature film which he has written and directed. 

Days before the film’s release on August 12, Phanideep is confident and yet nervous that his film releases in the same week as that of Rajinikanth starrer Jailer and Chiranjeevi starrer Bholaa Shankar. He says about Ustaad, which is the name of a bike in the film, and stars Sri Simha Koduri, Kavya Kalyanram, Gautham Menon, Anu Haasan and Ravindra Vijay, “If we get good feedback from the initial shows, the long weekend leading up to August 15 can work in our favour.” 

The film follows the story of Sri Simha’s character Surya, a pilot, who goes in search of his lost motorcycle named Ustaad, which served as a catalyst in his personal and professional journey. “There is a bit of me in Simha,” says Phanideep who believes that films are an extension of a writer-director’s personality and experiences. The idea began in 2014 as a short film and grew into a feature film in the next five years. “I matured as a person and that reflects in the characters I have written.” 

Much of the writing and pitching to producers happened in 2018 and 2019. Phani was going through a rough patch and had little money to spare. He rented a cabin at C-Space (a co-working space for cinema) for three months, at ₹4000 a month. “That is the amount I could spare. I had to complete writing within that period and get things moving.” Ustaad took shape as a story set in a suburb not far away from the Shamshabad airport in Hyderabad. 

Phanideep describes Ustaad as a character-driven story. “Simha plays a hot-blooded youngster who shows his aggression on things he possesses. The girl he loves (Kavya as Meghna) thinks that she might also be subjected to a similar anger from him.” While writing the relationship portions, Phanideep says he was conscious that the girl’s character should not come across as a pushover. “Some of the producers I pitched the story to would tell me that the audience would not notice minor aspects, but I was particular that certain (gender) sensibilities cannot be changed.”

He had signed Kavya much before she became a household name with Balagam. “She used to ask me a lot of questions and that also helped me finetune her character.” 

Ravindra Vijay plays an alcoholic mechanic who repairs Ustaad from time to time, Gautham Menon plays the pilot captain and Anu Haasan plays a progressive single mother. “I tried not to be a fanboy while directing Gautham sir. And, Anu ma’am initially met us with the intention of turning down the film. But after we got talking, she agreed to do the film. I am lucky to have good actors on board for my first film.”