Agnyathavasi producer Hemanth M Rao: The plan with Dakshayini Talkies is to…

Director and producer Hemanth M Rao rechristened his banner Lost & Found Films to Dakshayini Talkies – a tribute to his late mother – and the first film from it is Janardhan Chikkanna’s Agnyathavasi.

Hemanth M Rao has produced Janardhan Chikkanna's next, Agnyathavasi

When Kannada filmmaker Hemanth M Rao made his debut feature film Godhi Banna Sadharana Mykattu, which he eventually had to co-produce, it was quite the struggle to put the movie together. He and the film’s leading man Rakshit Shetty would have discussions about this and the need to grow to a position in which they could produce such movies every year. The plan was to be able to direct their own films, but also back someone else’s vision, and, in doing so, figure out a mechanism to earn money from this endeavour.

Rakshit has been doing his bit for a while with his Paramvah Studios and Hemanth is trying to live up to his end of that conversation with films like Agnyathavasi, which releases in theatres on April 11, 2025. The film has been directed by Gultoo director Janardhan Chikkanna, who despite having made a profitable venture, struggled to find backing for his next, which is where Hemanth came in. The Sapta Sagaradaache Ello maker got a couple of investors on board and kickstarted the project headlined by Cyanide -fame Rangayana Raghu.

Hemanth M Rao was fascinated by the screenplay of Agnyathavasi

Hemanth, who puts all the money he makes from cinema into producing other movies because the business of cinema is all that he knows, said in a recent interview that the plan for the banner is to be able to make 5-6 films in a year – the kind that he would like to see as a member of the audience. As for Agnyathavasi, Hemanth says that what caught his interest was the nature of the screenplay, in terms of how the story unfolds, and the nature of the subject, which he says Janardhan has presented quite cleverly.

A murder mystery, Agnyathavasi, says Hemanth, is a good mixture of addressing the who (the perpetrator of the crime) and the why. As someone who has watched a lot of films in the genre, what Janardhan’s script was attempting seemed fascinating and that is how Anyathavasi became a Dakshayini Talkies presentation.

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