Exclusive! Ramesh Aravind decodes his next directorial, the Kannada-Telugu bilingual 100

On Monday, Ramesh Aravind took to social media to post a picture of himself that he captioned, ‘Just chilling… waiting for 100 to release’. The film, 100, is Ramesh’s next directorial, which is about cybercrime and is being released in Kannada and Telugu. So, we checked in with the actor-director if a release date is on the horizon, now that theatres are set to operate at full capacity. “Not yet, but we are in the process of finalizing details,” he says.

In an earlier conversation with OTTplay, Ramesh had said, “100 is censored U/A and ready for release. It was supposed to release on the 50th day of Shivaji Surathkal: Ranagiri Rahasya, but then the lockdown happened. In between, the producer suggested that a Telugu version would be good, so we dubbed it and called it 100#cybercrime. The film has Rachita Ram and Poorna along with me. The film’s subject revolves around social media and its message is that social media is a boon that is not to be turned into a curse. I play a cybercrime police officer in this film, which will be my next release. Once theatres are functional at 100%, we will figure it out, keeping about 40-45 days for publicity. I am very happy with the way the film has turned out and am just waiting for audiences to see it. In fact, even though 100 was ready in early 2020, when I saw it again recently after the Telugu dubbing, I still felt gung-ho about it.”

The film, he adds, was made after months of research, which involved literally chasing officials in Bengaluru’s Cybercrime department, to understand their processes and how to recreate it onscreen. While the title refers to the emergency number to call the police, Ramesh says that the numbers 1 and 0 also denote the binary system that computers are based on.