‘Gultoo is on crime and privacy’

Debutant director Janardhan Chikkanna is doing the sound mixing for his upcoming release Gultoo, slated for release next week. 

"We work better in the eleventh hour. Our Indian mentality is that, until the deadline nears, we tend to relax," he laughs.

The first-time director has piqued people’s interest with the title Gultoo, the teaser and the recently released trailer. He says that he will reveal the intent behind the title, but only two days before the release. 

About the film’s storyline, Janardhan says, that it has a lot to do with coding and encryption. "Hacking, encryption and decryption are key words in the online world, and the movie deals with this amply in its first half and climax. The title Gultoo is an encrypted string, the meaning of which I will reveal soon, through a campaign," says the director, who is an Information Science graduate. 

"This subject has not been dealt with in Kannada. This helps my film stand out from the crowd. But I didn’t pick this subject simply to be noticed. I genuinely felt that this subject had to be explored, since it is so relevant to our times," says Janardhan, who has also written the script. 

This is a crime thriller, but it deals with a unique crime. "I realised films in this genre generally deal with murder or adapt a real-life incident, and these have been done to death. But Indians are heavily influenced by the West, and digital crime is so common these days… I thought I should throw light on individual privacy and our vulnerability online," he says.

The director has come out with different posters too, which go well with the title and subject of Gultoo. "I made a trailer, in which every actor wore glasses with round frames, and this became a highlight," he says.

Interestingly, Janardhan had the actors in place and then found a producer. Except for Rangayana Raghu and Pawan Kumar, all the actors, including Avinash, newcomer Naveen Shankar (who plays the lead), Sonu Gowda, and Dhanu, came on board before the film got a producer. "They were quite enthused with the subject and believed in the content. This helped me come up with a good product," he says with confidence. 

Gultoo has music by Amit Anand and cinematography by Shanthi Sagar