Kadamban is a complete package

Director Ragava of Manja Pai fame is now back into the limelight with his next film, Kadamban, starring Arya and Catherine Tresa in the lead roles. During a chat with us, Ragava talks about the film in detail, the roles of Arya and Catherine and the underlying message in the movie.

Arya essays the role of Kadamban, a tribal in a village while Catherine Tresa plays the role of Rathi. “Kadamban means ‘protector’ and how he protects the forest cover and the people forms the crux of the story. The film is packaged in a way that it has all commercial elements, with an underlying social message. The message is not to destroy the nature, but to protect it like one’s child,” says Ragava.

When asked about the green colour tone in most of the scenes, the director explains, “Since the movie is set in dense forests, we thought of having the green tint on screen. The shades will change as the story progresses. When I wrote the script, I immediately thought of Arya. He has this chocolate boy image which I wanted to break. His dedication and hard work has elevated the film to a new level. Be it jumping from a mountain set  which is 220m high or shooting amidst 50 elephants, he went all out and performed the stunts without using a body double.”

Ragava cannot stop praising his crew and technicians. “The grandeur you see on screen is the output of the crew’s hard work. I made sure that the film stays true to reality. Neither the stunt sequences nor the romance portions have been exaggerated,” he concluded.