Junior director Radhakrishna Reddy: Directing a hero’s debut film and ensuring it reaches audiences was a challenge

Junior director Radhakrishna Reddy, who made his mark with the Kannada film Mayabazar 2016, says he got lucky with Junior’s leading man Kireeti Reddy

Kireeti Reddy in Junior

Junior, the launchpad of actor Kireeti Reddy, released in theatres on July 18 and the Kannada-Telugu bilingual has been doing well at the box office, especially in the Telugu version. The film has been directed by Radhakrishna Reddy, who’d earlier made Mayabazar 2016 for Puneeth Rajkumar’s PRK Productions. The filmmaker has been soaking in all the praise that’s been coming his way for successfully launching Kireeti with Junior, which, based on the initial teasers was thought to be a light-hearted campus romance.

But as it turns out, Radhakrishna put together an intense family drama, with romance and action thrown in for good measure. “The plan, from the start, was to do a family entertainer that would draw audiences across age groups to theatres,” said the filmmaker in conversation with Tv9 Kannada, adding that he’s grateful that Kireeti’s dad, politico and businessman Janardhan Reddy and producers Varaahi Chalana Chitram, trusted him with the opportunity to write and direct Junior, which served as Kireeti’s debut vehicle.

“Writing a film is not a big deal; what is that you need a producer or banner to trust your conviction and support you. Junior, though, was a big responsibility and challenge – it was the launch vehicle of a newbie actor and had to be a mainstream commercial movie that would reach the masses. Both were new challenges for me, but then, I got lucky that I had an actor as talented as Kireeti to work with. He’s a bundle of raw talent, which made my job easy,” said Radhakrishna.

The filmmaker also addressed the perception that people had prior to the film’s release that Junior would probably be a big-budget project shot on massive sets and a hero who can’t act. Kireeti has proved all of them wrong with his performance in the film. Kireeti, says the filmmaker, has been nurturing a dream to be an actor for a few years and has poured his heart and soul into achieving this. So much so that by the time they’d finished a couple of schedules, Radhakrishna did not feel he was working with a newbie.

He points out that Kireeti had nearly done the climax in single-takes – such was his commitment to the scene and will to excel. “We may have reshot some sequences, but they were always for technical reasons and not about his performance,” added Radhakrishna.

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