Sudheer Shanbhogue who is making his debut with Ananthu v/s Nusrath —starring Vinay Rajkumar and Latha Hegde — had a thirst to tell a story. He decided to take the visual route to narrate his tale. “The reach of novels is much less compared to the visual medium. That’s my personal opinion,” says the writer, who was associate with Tulu film, Madipu, which won the national award.
Unlike the usual “Hindu girl-Muslim boy love story”, Sudheer’s film looks at the emotions involved. “It’s purely about the relationship between the girl and boy. The film also includes lawyers in the backdrop, which is rare,” Sudheer explains.
The idea came about when Sudheer was exploring the idea of love in a lawyer’s life. “It started off as an offbeat story, but eventually turned out to be a commercial one - a romantic drama,” says Sudheer, who was initially sceptical to feature Latha Hegde as young judge. “But after much research, I realised that many young judges were being appointed,” he says.
“Unlike college students, I can’t have lawyers running around trees. There are emotions involved, but there is practicality to it. The reason I chose to depict lawyers was because I felt that so far, a film on them and their personal sides had not been done,” says Sudheer, who consulted at least eight lawyers as part of his research.
Soon after he finalised his story, Sudheer knew he wanted to rope in Vinay, who would fit the bill best. “He was also quite thrilled about the film’s story in the first narration itself. It’s a fresh role for Vinay,” Sudheer, who is also the writer of the upcoming film, Alidu Ullidavaru.