Pawan Kumar: I don’t spoon-feed the audience

Pawan Kumar

Pawan Kumar doesn’t like to be reminded that his last big release was in 2018. “Since then, I have been constantly creating something,” says the Kannada filmmaker. “As an artist, I have always been busy,” he adds.

To be fair to Pawan, he didn’t go on a sabbatical. Soon after the Tamil and Telugu remakes of ‘U Turn’ in 2018, acting opportunities came his way (‘Chambal’, ‘Alidu Ulidavaru’, and ‘Gaalipata’). He co-directed the Hindi web series ‘Leila’ (2019) for Netflix and made the Kannada short film ‘Asmite’ last year.

“Despite this, I understand that people badly want me to bring out something as a filmmaker,” he says. Pawan returns as a director with his maiden web series ‘Kudi Yedamaithe’, set to premiere on Aha on July 16. The Telugu sci-fi thriller will be four-hour long across eight episodes.

The racy teaser, which dropped on YouTube, shows Amala Paul in a cop avatar while Rahul Vijay plays a delivery boy. In an interview with Showtime, Pawan spoke about his latest project. Excerpts:

This is your first collaboration with a writer. How was the experience?

Ram Vignesh wrote the script. Interestingly, I have only met him briefly, for like five minutes, in the last eight months. He had visited the sets one day. Aha told me that I am free to adapt the screenplay. Ram had written a full-fledged sci-fi thriller. I added emotional connections between the characters. I also introduced some characters. Ram was sensible not to intervene in the process.

You predominantly make films in Kannada. How did you overcome the language barrier?

I grew up listening to Telugu. I would spend my summer holidays in Hyderabad and in a town close by because my mother is from this region. When I did the Telugu remake of ‘U Turn’, I was in Hyderabad for a while. Of course, I had an associate, who helped me whenever I couldn’t process some dialogues. It’s not very difficult.

Amala Paul has excelled in character-driven roles in Tamil films like ‘Mynaa’ (2010) and ‘Aadai’ (2019). Tell us about her performance in ‘Kudi Yedamaithe’.

She has been an experimental performer. She has never limited herself to doing only complete commercial films. In fact, she isn’t a Telugu-speaking person but she adapted very quickly. She had a dialogue coach and worked hard on getting the lines right. Sometimes, when the dialogue would go wrong, she expressed herself and played with her eyes. This made her appear as though she knows the language. So that was one of her strengths.

People expect mind-bending films from you but you started off with a love story (‘Lifeu Ishtene’). Before that, you wrote films for Yogaraj Bhat, who makes solid relationship dramas. Will we see you experiment with genres?

I am not making way too much abstraction. I try to probably not spoon-feed. Our audiences are so used to being spoon-fed that when I do films that are a notch higher, they think I am doing mind-bending stuff. If you look at ‘Lucia’ or ‘U Turn’, there is a strong drama between the characters. Theatre gave me the platform to be a little abstract. I brought that style into films and maybe people felt it was something new.