Mansore: 19.20.21 was not the first title of choice, but it made sense for the subject of the film

When Kannada filmmaker Mansore announced his next film after Act-1978, and the title only had three numbers, it raised a lot of eyebrows. The film was called 19.20.21 and was about human rights violation based on a true story – that’s all Mansore said at that point. There was a lot of intrigue surrounding the film based solely on its title, which, the filmmaker later explained was a derivative of specific plot points. Interestingly, though, 19.20.21 was not his first choice as title.

Speaking to a news outlet, Mansore said that except for his first, Harivu, every other film he had multiple attempts at registering a title before finalizing one. For Nathicharami, he says, he had thought of 3-4 other titles, but each time he was told by the Kannada Film chamber of Commerce that these had already been registered by other filmmakers. He eventually settled for a lesser-known word and got lucky that no one else thought of it. With Act 1978 also, it was the same case, so he revisited his script and came across a line said by a lawyer, where the law about dismissal of government employees is listed and since his film was based on that subject, Mansore thought that it was best to name it after the core matter. What helped him zero in on this was the fact that an internet search for Act 1978 only threw up information about a chit fund cheating and not anything to do with his film.

When he was making 19.20.21, Mansore’s original titles already had takers, so he poured over is script and found that the laws and clauses that form the basis of the story also coincide with the years in which the tale unfolds. So, it made sense for him to pick this combination, which has intrigued audiences about the real-life incident and the issue addressed in his film.