Udgharsha poster designed to grab eyeballs

Sunil Kumar Desai’s recently-released poster of his upcoming film Udgharsha, is garnering eyeballs for its unusual design of two set of hands, a knife and a pool of blood. For the mystery suspense-thriller with a tagline, ‘Battle at its peak’, the filmmaker says that ‘hands and legs will do the talking’ in his film or at least in the posters. To be released in Kannada, Telugu and Tamil, the film has a diverse cast that includes Thakur Anoop Singh of Singham 3 fame, Dhansika, who was associated with Kabali, and Prabhakar, who shot into limelight with Baahubali. The film is made under the banner D-Creations and has Bollywood music composer, Sanjay Chowdary scoring the music. While Kemparaju is the editor of the film, Ravi Varma will choreograph the stunts, and Vishnuvardhan and P Rajan are in charge of the film’s cinematography.

Sunil, the maker of films such as Tarka, Uthkarsha, Nishkarsha, Sangarsha, Marma, and Kshana Khsana, seems to have figured out the promotional formula. The poster is designed to send shivers down spines and create anticipation. Currently at the edit desk, the filmmaker says the intention of the posters is to grab attention towards the story and characters, rather than just focussing on the lead pair. “I am working on posters that will include only hands, legs, eyes, and face in shadows. Only in the end will a face to the characters be put on the poster,” says the director, adding, “I want to keep the suspense going and keep the audience guessing about whose hands and legs are on the posters.”

Only 20 minutes of dialogue in the film

Udgharsha is about a murder mystery that takes place in a resort on New Year’s Day. “A 10-minute incident has been turned into a full-length feature film. In fact, the film has only 20 minutes of dialogue, the rest of the film will contain shots, music and effects. My film mostly runs on visual narration. Characters will have dialogues only in necessary situations,” says Sunil, who wants to get rid of the ‘hero-heroine’ concept. “For me, every character is equally important,” he adds.

Film was shot in Madikeri prior to the floods

The film will be ready by October, and will released in three languages. “The initial plan was to release it in four languages, but owing to the floods in Kerala, I dropped the idea of releasing it in Malayalam. While Udgharsha can be treated as a universal subject, technology has given us a platform to release it in any number of languages. The dubbing has been completed in Kannada. We will be going to a dubbing studio in Chennai today, where the Tamil version will be dubbed, which will then be followed by the Telugu version,” he says.

While the film has been shot in  Hyderabad, Kerala and Bengaluru, most of the film’s shoot took place in portions of Madikeri, which he says, has now vanished. “We managed to capture the beauty of Madikeri before the floods hit,” he adds.

Director to audience: What does Udgharsha mean?

Not just the poster, the title of the film is also creating a buzz among the audience. Apparently, Sunil received several messages asking him the meaning of the title. “Some cine-goers were even looking up the dictionary. I have left it to the audience to find its meaning, and if they find out, they can let me know. I chose the word because I thought there was a fire to it and it went with the theme of the film,” he says.