Experimenting with a different genre, Sandalwood director Dayal Padmanabhan is hogging limelight at the national level. Dayal’s latest flick ‘Haggada Kone’ has been selected for the 3rd New Delhi International Film Festival 2014 scheduled to be held in December. Dayal who considers the movie as ‘experimental’ is an adaptation of the famous play by noted Kannada playwright Parvathavani.
Haggada Kone which literally means ‘end of rope’ is about a prison inmate waiting to be hanged to death. The movie, with philosophical moorings, explores relationship between various oppositions life throws up while simultaneously throwing light on several contemporary issues. Naveen Krishna, who plays the role of a convict Channa, triggered controversy during the making of the film by going ‘full monty’ though there was no such episode in the original play. However, later it was played down as a publicity stunt.Besides, the director and producer made headlines with their decision to screen the movie only in multiplexes.
Visibly happy Dayal said that his hard efforts have paid off. “I had sent the movie a week ago to various festivals across the country. On Saturday morning I got a mail that my movie has been chosen. It will be screened in the Indian Showcase category at the festival. While preparing the script itself I had decided that the movie will be meant for international viewers,” Dayal said.
Choosing to be different from his usual style of making movies in romantic, thriller and other genres, Dayal deliberately picked up the parallel cinema stream to test his directorial sensibilities. “It’s been my dream to make a movie for international audience with some sensible message which should not be treated as commercial. I should not brand myself for a particular genre.Similarly, I refuse to acknowledge my film as an art cinema. Instead I would love to call it as an experimental cinema which would create some better viewership with sensibilites,” Dayal opined.
Dayal was previously known for his movie ‘Gharshane’. Haggada Kone is the 11th movie which has been sent to festivals across the country. “We have sent the movie to seven festivals across the country and 23 different festivals across the globe. NDFE is the first to acknowledge and the entire team of the film is ecstatic. We hope to be chosen as world premier status movie in the upcoming Bangalore International Film Festival too,” expressed Dayal.
