HYDERABAD: Director of the popular travel show Vihari, A L Nitin Kumar, is now in the news for his movie Lotus Pond which is the only film from Andhra Pradesh selected for the Competition Section of the 17th International Children’s Film Festival. It will be competing with the likes of I am Kalam, Stanley Ka Dabba and Chillar Party for the Golden Elephant.
The film features two students of a boarding school driven by their inquisitiveness to explore the Lotus Pond in the Himalayas. The films stars director Puri Jagannath’s son Akash Petla and Rohit Ranka who has also acted in the Telugu movie Golconda High School.
Speaking about the film, Nitin Kumar said he wanted to make a children’s film with everything positive about it. “While I respect films such as Slumdog Millionaire, I wanted to, for once, forget about negative aspects of the society and make a positive film for children,” he told City Express. The director found that directing children is very challenging. “Not always do they listen to your instructions. We also had to continuously provide them with juice so that they would not get tired. It was a challenging task,” he said. The children have found the experience extremely valuable to them. Says Rohit Ranka, a class IX student of the Geetanjali School, that he knew nothing about acting but now had picked up many skills. Rohit hopes to make a career in acting. As part of the film, the children had to trek the Himalayas and both of them were enthralled with the whole experience though it turned out to be tiresome at times.