Shot in just 18 hours as an experiment, with a team of 600 junior artists and 10 directors, the film Sugreeva has turned out to be a surprise hit. The story is about a working class family – the father is a motor mechanic – who have high ambitions for their son as a dancer. They enter him into a reality show but he falls at a crucial moment and it is then that they discover he has a serious medical complaint. The film then switches tack to become an incisive social commentary on the problems of getting decent medical care, a theme that resonates strongly with the audience.
The film stars Shivaraj Kumar and Yagna Shetty. Veteran actor Shivaraj is particularly excellent, demonstrating his wide range of skills as he closes in on his 100th movie. He is now looking forward to the much-anticipated Cheluveye Ninne Nodalu with Bollywood actress Sonal Chauhan which is being filmed around the seven wonders of the world in Agra, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, China, Jordan, and Italy – that will probably take more than 18 hours.
Yagna Shetty, meanwhile, made a big impact on the small screen in the reality show Dream Girls, but despite other offers in that area has decided to concentrate on cinema for now. “I have been thinking about this for some time,“ she says, “I am only really interested in taking good acting roles and not becoming typecast. To fulfil that need I should keep acting in cinema.”
