After winning awards and accolades with his offbeat films, film scribe-turned-moviemaker, K.N.T. Sastry is coming up with a children’s feature film titled Shaanu produced by the Children’s Film Society of India.
“It is the story of a nine year old girl, Shaanu (pet name of Sarvani) and her classmate and friend Ganapati. Shaanu is strongly infatuated by her own beliefs which coincidentally do happen. For instance, she predicts that her relative will give birth to a baby girl and it happens!
Such coincidences make her proud of her beliefs. In school, she joins the kho-kho team and rises to the level of representing her school in the district tournament. But when she was about to leave for the tournament, her mother becomes sick with malaria.
Though her parents assure her that she would be all right by the time she returns, Shaanu is in two minds to leave for the tournament,” K.N.T. Sastry adds,
“ Shaanu is conceived on two planes, the beliefs and the simple things which make children nurse a particular line of action on the one hand and kho-kho play on the other hand.”
(The girls in Shaanu)
Perhaps this is the first time in Telugu cinema that a movie is made with kho-kho forming a backdrop for a movie, he adds.
With Baby Jahnavi and master Satwick playing the lead characters with child actors Shriya, Chaitra and Pranathi in the cast,
Sastry shot the movie in the picturesque rural areas of West Godavari district – Samanasa village and in the surroundings of Amalapuram and Ainavilli. Sivaji Raja and Madhavi acted as Shaanu’s parents while Shafi makes a special appearance as the kho-kho coach.
The six time national award-winner with four Nandi awards and two International awards (for Tiladanam at the Busan Film Festival and for the English documentary Harvesting Baby Girls at the Amsterdam film fest.) in his kitty, Sastry has gathered the best of talent to support him in this venture too. M.G. Radhakrishnan has wielded the camera and the national award winning editor Srikar Prasad edited the movie. Isaac Thomas Kottukapalli composed the music for Kasibhatla Venugopal’s lyrics who also wrote the dialogues.
Sastry has a special word of praise for his lead child artiste Jahnavi.
“She has excelled in giving the right expressions, and in superb timing of her dialogue delivery, which made me to opt for her own voice while dubbing. We will get the first print by end of December.”
