Badiger Devendra, who hails from North Karnataka, is busy directing his first film Rudri in North Karnataka. What’s special? Well, for one the film celebrates women. “The aim of making this film is to show that a woman can rise above her troubles and emerge a winner. She can not always be treated as a victim,” explains Badiger, who “had no connection with the film industry.”
The filmmaker says he belongs to a “humble family” where his father worked as a government employee. “Their dream was to educate and help me get a job with a steady income. I never dreamt of a career in films or acting,” says the man, who lived in Mysuru as a child watching plays staged by Rangayana “nurturing a dream of being involved in films”.
It was by chance that he got into making films. “We had a travel agency and organised trips for film actors. During these trips my connection with the film industry grew and one day a few of us decided to make a short film, just to get a hang of filmmaking,” explains Badiger, whose short film, Chithha Chaaye, a psychological thriller, has received over 10,000 likes on the Youtube.
The journey, reveals the director, was not easy. “It was all by trial and error. We would shoot and re-shoot till we were happy with what we finally captured on camera.”
It was only after this, he says, he had the “guts” to make his first feature film and wrote the script of Rudri. Badiger says the film is special as “It will be in the North Karnataka dialect. Usually, you would have one character speaking this dialect, but in Rudri, every character will speak the same dialect,” says Badiger. The other speciality about the film, is that the cast apart from the lead (Pavana Gowda) and Sudha Prasanna, who plays her mother, are from theatre.
“There will be no songs or romance in the film. It is a tight script that will keep you enthralled.”
Why did he not cast popular actors in his film? He replies, “We wanted the story and the characters to come alive, not the actors,” says Badiger, who has already started the first leg of shooting in Koppal and Yelburgi.
He says the film is a celebration of the woman and her strength. “It talks about how a situation in her life changes her perspective and she emerges from being a victim to a victor.”