Even my parents gave up on me

Sujeeth, director of ‘Run Raja Run’, may be new to feature filmmaking but his tryst with the camera began as soon as he completed Class X. A storyteller since childhood, he skipped school and tuition many a time narrating convincing stories to his family. “Direction was never on my agenda,” avers the 24-year-old. During his schooling in Chennai, he assisted a company which specialised in making ads. “While working there, a person once asked my opinion on a certain ad sequence. I frankly told him it was trash. He asked me to come up with my version. I wrote it in no time and he liked it. Before leaving for Hyderabad, I wrote some more sequences for him,” he recalls. However, after a year, Sujeeth was perplexed to see the same sequences in a film. “Though they were not filmed to perfection, I felt I had it in me to be a director.”

With the help of his mobile camera, Sujeeth soon started making short films in Hyderabad. “It was the time when YouTube was making its presence felt. I uploaded one of my videos on the platform and it garnered 100 likes; it was very big at that point of time. Later my parents got to know my interest in films. My dad took me to a big director, who told me -- ‘The film industry is a dangerous place, better avoid it’. I asked him why he is in it when it’s a dangerous place and he preferred to avoid my question,” laughs Sujeeth as he goes on to explain how he persisted in pursuing his passion. “My parents left me on my own for a year. They even gifted me a camera on my birthday after which there was no stopping. I made more short films, some of which did catch many eyeballs.”

His next stop was to turn an assistant director. However, unhappy with the ambiance on a film set, he decided to enroll himself in the prestigious LV Prasad Film and TV Academy in Chennai, where he made ‘Vesham’, a short film that received accolades across short film festivals in India. It even got him a cash prize of Rs 25,000 at a Mumbai short film festival. Talking about his entry into the film industry, Sujeeth says, “After finishing the two-and-a-half years Diploma in Film Technology course I landed in Hyderabad once again to realise my dream of becoming a film director. I even made some short films before bagging Neelima Tirumalasetty’s ‘Alias Janaki’,” he says.

Nevertheless, he distanced himself from the project within a week of its muhurat. Not keen to elaborate the reasons, he later managed to get an appointment with ‘Mirchi’ producers who were on the hunt to produce a medium-budget flick. “I’ve shown them my short films; they liked it. Later I gave them a narration of ‘Run Raja Run’, the title of one of my short films. They were mighty impressed but wanted me to alter the second half. I rewrote the second half completely before taking them into confidence again,” he says.

Speaking about the film which will hit the screens on August 1, he says it’s a crime drama interspersed with romance. “It’s about this guy Raja Harishchandra Prasad (Sharwanand) who never lies and in the process loses all the girls he likes. And when he finally meets a girl (Serat Kapoor), daughter of a police commissioner, who is ready for a lifetime commitment, he sees himself in a spot. What transpires is told in a humorous way,” he states.