Thimme Gowda, who is commonly referred to as Jocky by the people in the Kannada film industry, left his village Magadi and came to Bengaluru to become a director in 2009. He started his journey as a light boy and then went on to become a co-director with films like Victory, Ranna, Lucky, Santhu Straight Forward and Prashanth Neel’s KGF Chapter 1.

He is finally turning into an independent director with Shokiwala. The film starring Ajay Rao and Sanjana Anand is all set to hit the theatres this Friday. Ahead of the release, Ajay talks to CE about playing the titular role. “Shokiwala translates to a person who is a ‘show off’, and that’s my character’s summary. Though I have done a rural film and played someone from the middle class, this is the first time I am part of an out and out comedy.  By now, the audience is used to the tragedy in my films but Shokiwala will be starkly different to my previous films,” says Ajay.

He shares that every character in Showkiwala is equally important. “It isn’t the kind of film that is reliant on only the hero, every character who appears on screen is as vital as the protagonist.”

Ajay goes on to explain how he got into the skin of the character. “It was interesting to play a happy-go-lucky village boy. I imbibed some of my friends’ mannerisms to play this role. I know them from the time I did Excuse Me.” Ajay says COVID was a blessing in disguise to Shokiwala. “We had completed shooting before the pandemic and we used the last few years to improve the re-recording, editing, and other post-production works. I think Shokiwala has evolved into a better film and it is still fresh. When we saw it recently, it felt like it was shot yesterday.” The film is backed by T R Chandrashekar’s Crystal Paark Cinemas and has music scored by Sridhar Sambraham.