‘Awe’ a crazy experiment, says Prashanth Varma

Another young director Prashanth Varma is trying to make a path-breaking movie ‘Awe’ and change the face of Telugu cinema. He has an ensemble of cast that includes Nithya Menon, Kajal Agarwal, Regina Casandra, Priyadarshi and others. 

“In `Pulp Fiction’, can you relate to any of the characters?” he asked and suggested that ‘Awe’ will be something like that. He called the movie “a crazy experiment” that will help future directors do original stories if it is successful.

Speaking about Nani coming on board as the producer, Prasanth said that each actor that he pitched his story to wanted to produce the film. “I initially pitched the script to Nani, Ravi Teja and Kajal Aggarwal and all three of them wanted to produce the film,” he recalled.

Coincidentally, they are also the only people who heard the story in its entirety. Prasanth got the nod from other actors by pitching only their specific characters. 

“During the shoot, the others did not know the story and were only sure about what their character would do in the film. It was during the dubbing process that they all realized what would be happening, especially in the climax and they were impressed,” he said.

So what genre would this film fit into? It has elements of a thriller and fantasy, with a dash of horror. “All these different elements boil down to a social drama but I can’t exactly put a finger on the kind of film this is,’’ he adds.

Actually, the story idea for ‘Awe’ came from desperation, frustration and lack of money and that is what helped the director make the film. “Initially, I wanted to produce the film but I only had a few lakhs of rupees. So I wanted to work on a film that would fit in this project. People say that necessity is the mother of all inventions and that turned out to be true in my case,” he said.