Cinema Bandi: A colorful journey of a wanna-be director.

Khevna.P.Shah, INN/Bangalore

Content Writer

Cinema Bandi (Cinema vehicle), a Netflix original movie released on 14 May 2021, is a Telugu movie produced by Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K and directed by Debutant Praveen Kandregula. The film is set up in a small village near the Andra-Karnataka border. The film became the most popular Indian film on Netflix and was placed on the top spot in Netflix India Trending in its debut week.

The film is centered in a small village near the Andhra-Karnataka border, Gollapalli is the story of Veerababu (Vikas Vasistha), an auto driver who finds a high-tech camera in his auto left behind by some passenger. He dreams of shooting a film inspired by the news reporting that Telugu films with smaller budgets go on to be a huge hit. He believes that this was the only way to escape from the ill infrastructure of the village and develop it by making new roads and providing all day long electricity. With the assistance of his friend Ganapathi (Sandeep Varanasi), a local wedding photographer, becomes the cinematographer of their film. Ganapathi being a supportive friend is a comical character, who manages to keep the story in the comic line. And the hairdresser Maridayya (Raj Mayur) gets cast as a hero and adopted the screen name, Maridesh Babu. On the other hand, an urban woman, Sindhu (Sindhu Sreenivasa Murthy) who is the owner of the camera goes in search of it. The movie ends with Sindu screening the clips which were previously shot by Ganapathi to the villagers, and Veera babu’s eyes gleam with hope once again.

Cinema Bandi is a simple, light-hearted comedy film highlighting the well-aware problems faced by the villagers such as lack of infrastructure and electricity. Including the issues faced by the directors for casting and finance are subtly portrayed. The movie shows off the woman as a strong, independent character Manga (Uma YG) who later became the actress for the movie, is a woman with dominating personality and likes to take things into control, instead of being a damsel in distress. Divya (Trishara) the former actress of the movie, fights her own battles when it comes to love and marriage. Veerababu’s wife understands the gravity of the problem and silently works as a laborer to support her husband. The camera is the symbolic representation of the underdeveloped, uneducated, and neglected folks of the villages when compared to the privileged, educated folks of the cities. Dialogues like “If everyone leaves for the city, who will take care of the village”, and “People from the city are adapting our culture and we are adapting theirs, what an irony”, makes one ponder.

The film’s tagline-Everyone is a filmmaker…at heart has definitely served justice to the film, but apart from that is seems to be also applicable to the director of the film, Debutant Praveen Kandregula, who met the producers’ Raj and DK at an interview in 2018. They asked him to make a short film on the same story. Thus, the film was shot in 2019, but due to covid-19 lockdown, it made an OTT release. In an interview, Raj Nidimoru said that, “We want to support indie filmmakers, especially first-timers to make their films. The idea is not to call for stories because it’s not like we have a dearth of them. It’s about finding a filmmaker who has a story or script and wants to make this film. If it interests us, we want to help them make it without any hassle.” The movie leaves the audience with a good laugh and a tiny mystery about the original writer of the script.

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