Sukriti Veni Bandreddi: I want to be a music teacher some day

Sukriti Veni Bandreddi, Sukumar and Thabitha’s daugther, reflects on her acting debut in Telugu film Gandhi Tatha Chettu.

Sukriti Veni Bandreddi, the 14-year-old lead actor of the Telugu film Gandhi Tatha Chettu, recalls her first day on set. “We were filming montage shots of my character, Gandhi, walking from home to school. I felt overwhelmed and struggled initially. I told myself to focus on just walking.” Sukriti was 12 at the time and had trained for two months with the film’s writer-director, Padmavathi Malladi, before heading to Nizamabad and Kamareddy districts in Telangana for the shoot.

After completing her first shot, Sukriti asked Padmavathi if her performance was satisfactory. Padmavathi encouraged her to take the lead and walk faster, so the scene would align visually with the idea of Gandhi walking ahead of others. Sukriti shares, “I learned to focus on small details, like keeping my back straight. I had to portray my character’s body language.”

When the film’s trailer was released, it surprised many followers of Telugu cinema to learn that Sukriti, the daughter of director Sukumar and Thabitha Sukumar, is making her acting debut.

With the film set to release in theaters on January 24, Sukriti reflects, “A friend who watched a preview told me I didn’t look or sound like myself on screen; all she saw was Gandhi. Looking back, I wonder if I should have sounded more mature. At the time, when the director described Gandhi as an innocent, energetic girl, I interpreted her as a child and spoke in a childlike voice.”

The dialogues were recorded using sync sound (capturing sound live on set rather than in a studio). “Everyone would go silent when the director said action, and we focused on getting everything right. If we made a mistake in one line, we had to start again,” Sukriti recalls.

Set in rural Telangana during the early 2000s, Gandhi Tatha Chettu brings out a sense of place and time. Sukriti, born and raised in Hyderabad, attended summer courses at Berklee College of Music in 2023 and 2024, where she studied music theory and singing. During this interview at Mythri Movie Makers’ office in Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad, Sukriti comes across as a typical urban high school student.

However, she easily switches to the Telangana Telugu dialect, which she has been familiar with since childhood. “I loved the village where we filmed and even made some friends. When the schedule ended, I asked my mom if we could stay longer.”