Cinema is changing and with it directors’ attitude to filmmaking. But one director who has stuck to his aesthetic principles is TN Seetharam.
The senior director, known for his top-rated serials including Mukha Mukhi, Manvantara and Mukhtha Muktha, is out with his third film.
A crime thriller Kaafi Thota, starring Radhika Chetan, Samyuktha Hornad and Raghu Mukherjee, has been cleared by the censors with a U and is slated to release this week.
“The filmmaking style I have followed for decades has not changed but I did have to work more closely with technology this time,” he says. “Kaafi Thota is a crime thriller and it had to be ahead of its times.” The director quickly adds that the movie explores relationships too.
It is set in a lone house in a sprawling coffee estate. “There is a popular tag line now ‘a lot can happen over coffee’. My film explores what happens to relationships when a crime happens, it can be good or bad,” he says.
Seeetharam say that a crime thriller affects not just the mind but also the heart.
“All along I have directed daily soaps and, in all of them, I have dealt with family drama, politics, relationships, crime and thrillers set in courts... these are themes I dealt with in films too. My first film Mathadana had politics, my second Meera Madhava Raghava was on relationships and now Koffee Thota has crime and courtroom drama,” he says. Seetharam is certain that any movie that is done with dignity will always find an audience.
It is interesting that his inspiration for Kaafi Thota came from the new crop of young directors. “Over the past two to three years, Sandalwood has seen so many good filmmakers come up,” he says.
“If I had to name a few there is D Sathyaprakash, Hemanth M Rao, Pawan Kumar, KM Chaitanya, Rama Reddy and Raj B Shetty... they dealt with unique subjects and came up with new kinds of films. I am too old to compete with them, but I too had a unique story to present through Kaafi Thota.”