BENGALURU: Belgaum or Belagavi, is a city that is situated in the bordering region of Karnataka and Maharashtra. With tensions coming in from both states on their right to claim it, the region is the subject of an everlasting linguistic dispute as it is home to significant populations of Kannada as well as Marathi speakers.
To portray the politics of the region from an insider’s perspective, Harshad Nalawade, hailing from Belgaum, is coming out with his debut feature film 'FOLLOWER', which will see its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, taking place between January 25 and February 5 in The Netherlands.
“The story is about a journalist who harbours pro-Marathi sentiments. , he deeply believes that Belgaum should be part of Maharashtra. There’s a local leader who has really started to reignite the dispute and the protagonist puts his faith in him. But over the course of the film, the protagonist discovers that many of his beliefs are based on half-truths and a certain kind of propaganda,” shares Nalawade, who has written, directed and acted (in a minor role) in the film.
As the film is inspired by existing political scenarios, Nalawade had seen glimpses of dispute in his formative years. “In a way, my life has been part of the research material. I grew up watching many such conflicts happening. Some subtle, some very violent. I have both Kannadiga and Marathi friends, so I have grown up observing this from a distance. I watched this conflict from a removed perspective and never really fell for that cause. I was more interested in trying to understand what it is that drives people into fighting for a certain cause. In a way, I have tried to explore that through this film,” says the director, who is also the co-creator and writer of the upcoming series Soup starring Konkona Sen Sharma and Manoj Bajpayee.
The film took about five years to finish and was initially crowd-funded. “I wrote the script around 2017-2018. We wanted to make this film but given the subject, it was difficult for us to find a producer. Back then, we were also unsure about how to go about things so we thought of crowdfunding it. We shot a teaser for the film and started a campaign on the internet to fund it. Eventually, we raised some money. It wasn’t enough to complete the film but it was just enough for us to shoot it. We managed to make a rough edit and started selling it to people. Eventually, one of our producers saw and liked the film and decided to help us finish it,” he says.
As it was his maiden cinematic project, the cast and crew have been first-timers as well. “Most of my crew were my college batchmates and all of us were new to this. Since the film was about Belgaum, we wanted actors from there. But as there doesn’t exist a film industry in the city, we had to rely on non-professional actors and people who were acting for the first time. To stay grounded with the realities of Belgaum, the film is largely in Kannada and Marathi, and some part of it is in Dakhni Hindi, the kind we speak there,” concludes Nalawade about his film, adding that he also had to drive the team to shooting locations for budgetary constraints.