BENGALURU: Slow Rivers is the tenth production from Bharatanatyam dancer Savitha Sastry and writer-director AK Srikanth. Known for their light-hearted storytelling from previous productions like Arangetram and Filter Coffee Masala Chai, this feature film, however, takes a tangent from the familiar road.
The story revolves around the relationship between an artiste and her art, a mind-bender that paints its canvas through the real and the unreal. Bollywood actor Ashish Vidyarthi plays the part of the guru, while Sastry is Sravaka, a well-known artiste.
“Slow Rivers would be among the most challenging projects I have worked on – whether it was sharing the screen with Ashish Vidyarthi or the intricate dance sequences I choreographed and filmed. My character is the one with many shades of grey,” says Sastry.
The movie is in English, while all of the previous productions have been in Hindi. However, Sastry didn’t let that stop her from emoting. “Sravaka is a foreigner, and the guru only interacts with her in English. Even from my own experience, I have seen my guru interacting with his foreign students in English, so it didn’t feel very different,” she says.
Vidyarthi, known for iconic roles, says he loved the multi-faceted nature of his role. “What I found interesting in the script was that my character is not real, he is only present in the memories of Sravaka. As I read it, I could see that he is not the truth. Maybe this person is not at all like that, and this is just how Sravaka believed him to be. So for me, it was about being in the moment and reflecting on what she thinks he is,” says Vidyarthi.
For director Srikanth, the film was an attempt to pay homage to visionary directors such as David Lynch and David Cronenberg. “Slow Rivers is a mind-bender that takes the viewers through the worlds of the real, the metaphysical and the delusional. While on the surface, it is about a guru and a shishya, I think at its heart, it is about that never-ending search for immortality,” says Srikanth, adding that this film holds a lot of weight in his filmography.
Composer Abhay Nayampally scores for this short, his sixth collaboration with Sastry and Srikanth. The film can be watched on Sastry’s YouTube channel. Currently, they are planning to take the film to various film festivals.