Kabzaa: Shriya Saran says that audiences today recognize and value the story of a film, not its language

Kabzaa is Shriya Saran’s second full-fledged Kannada film, which comes a decade after her first, Chandra. In 2007, she had done a brief cameo in the late Puneeth Rajkumar’s Arasu, which she remembers fondly and is glad to have had the opportunity. But it is the R Chandru directorial, which is releasing in theatres on March 17 that has brought her back, in a role that she’s repeatedly described as beautiful.

According to the poster announcement of her casting in the film, Shriya plays Princess Madhumathi. The actress and the filmmaker have been tight-lipped about the role, even though Shriya did let slip that she plays a mother of two and that Chandru felt that the fact that she was a mother in real life too would help her get into the skin of the character.

Shriya is currently in Bengaluru to promote the film, during which she was asked if she felt any difference between the Sandalwood of a decade ago and now. The actress answered that although beautiful films were being made across the country over the years, today, audiences don’t differentiate them based on language anymore. The actress pointed out that for Kannada, there’s a lot of recognition across the country thanks to the popularity of KGF, which Kantara also followed up. She reckons that it is a beautiful time for people to be in the industry because Language is no longer the reason for audiences to watch a film – it is the story that they watch it for. “When the story becomes the driving force, you start writing better tales and believing in cinema,” she said, talking to a Kannada digital news portal.

As for Chandru, the actress says that he has put a lot of money and effort into making Kabzaa, something that she says is a possibility only because markets have opened up for pan-India releases. “People no longer ask if a film will work in a particular language; they ask what is the story,” she added.