The Hindu’s Kannada cinema roundtable: Nithin Krishnamurthy, Rukmini Vasanth, Sindhu Sreenivasa Murthy and Shashank Soghal on their achievements this year

The four Kannada artistes Nithin Krishnamurthy, Rukmini Vasanth, Sindhu Sreenivasa Murthy and Shashank Soghal open up on their respective films, their changing perception of the Kannada film industry, and how world cinema has shaped their filmmaking sensibilities

“You make your first film only once. You can do it the way you want. Once you get past it, you get into the business aspect of cinema, and that’s when the artistic side begins to die. There are chances of you losing your innocence,” says director Nithin Krishnamurthy, during The Hindu’s Kannada cinema roundtable. It is with this innocence that all the participants of the roundtable — Nithin (director, Hostel Hudugaru Bekagiddare), Sindhu Sreenivasa Murthy (director, Aachar & Co), Rukmini Vasanth (actor, Sapta Sagaradaache Ello) and Shashank Soghal (director, Daredevil Musthafa) — were able to emerge as some of the unique talents from the Kannada film industry in 2023.

Sindhu grew up watching Anant Nag’s ‘Ganesha series’. “The protagonist was a grey character in those films. It was interesting that the hero was not a larger-than-life figure. But I felt the production value of Kannada films could go up, as they lacked aesthetics,” she observes. Sindhu’s Aachar & Co, a family drama set in Bengaluru of the 60s and 70s, was propelled by striking set designs and cinematography. It felt like watching a Wes Anderson film, as observed by critics and cinephiles.

“What I enjoyed in Wes Anderson films is that he leaves his stamp in all his works. You watch any film of his, and you know it bears his signature. He puts a lot of attention into the music, costumes, and cinematography. I love that he tries to create a unique experience. Even when it comes to his humour, you don’t see the rolling-on-the-floor laughing type of moments in his films. The comedy is very awkward, and many in-between moments are funny,” she describes.

Nithin, who ensures he watches one film every day, adores Edgar Wright and Upendra. As he aspired to be a filmmaker, he missed genre-specific entertainers in Kannada. 

“I felt filmmakers tried to offer us wholesome entertainers. But we needed more serious entertainers. You can make an entertainer in the violent genre like Quentin Tarantino does,” says Nithin. His idiosyncratic Hostel Hudugaru Bekagiddare, a rip-roaring comedy on what unfolds one night at a hostel, pays homage to all his favourite filmmakers even as it stays interesting with hand-held cinematography and dialogues that sound spontaneous.

Shashank is a stage actor and loves watching plays. “You learn the nuances of cinema through theatre,” he says. An avid reader, his Daredevil Musthafa was adapted from Poornachandra Tejaswi’s short story, a college drama with a message of communal harmony. Shashank says that he had a complex over Kannada films during his college days. “My friends would tease me because many remakes were made in Kannada back then. A Cyanide or a Lucia would come out rarely. In that sense, I would say I learnt a lot from bad films.”

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