Flight of a free bird

The story of the young boy Kishore, who is extremely happy living in a village along with his grandfather and runs away from home when he realises that his father may forcibly take him to the US, ‘Baanaadi’, was screened at Prasad’s during the festival.

The boy is given shelter by street performers and he starts enjoying his stay with them. He learns their music, their way of life and in turn helps them in fine tuning their art, teaches his songs and also writes a book that he publishes with the help of his teacher. He loves living life like a free bird and when eventually his father finds him, he is not happy.

Debut director Nagaraja Kote is a theatre veteran. He has been writing plays, acting and directing for his drama company, Nagaloke. He also wrote books and poetry. When the producer (Nagraj) approached him for writing and directing a children’s film, he thought of adapting his own novel, ‘Usiru’. “I wrote the novel in 1995 and adapted it into a one-hour play. But I changed the screenplay for the film.”

The simple story of ‘Baanaadi’ is elevated by the message that it conveys without being preachy. You laugh, you cry and have fun along with Kishore and without realizing are affected by the love for mother tongue, importance of education, respect for folk artistes and above all the significance of recognizing and respecting a child’s choice. The music was quite earthy and while some of the songs are penned by the director; there is one famous song of poet GP Rajarathnam that was rendered well and stays with you.

The director is quite excited as this is the first festival that the film has been selected and he hopes this is just the beginning of an exciting time. Going by the response of the audience to the film at the festival, one can only be sure of it. The film also had a good run during its commercial release. Nagaraja shares, “The film was released in 25 theatres and was a commercial success. But our next film is not going to be a children’s film. Market is still low for children’s film.”