Rajkummar Rao-starrer Srikanth has officially bagged the 72nd National Award for Best Hindi Feature Film. Still sinking in the excitement, the film’s director Tushar Hiranandani and his producer wife Nidhi Parmar spoke to mid-day about the film being honoured. The makers spoke about how the film was made under budget despite getting a capped budget. They also got candid about how the biographical drama, based on the life of visually-impaired industrialist Srikanth Bolla, was snubbed at awards before bagging the National Award.
Srikanth makers about the film being snubbed
Talking about the feeling of winning the National Award, Tushar says, “I think it will sink in slowly. But yes, the kind of messages that I have got from the entire industry that it really deserved, that we deserve to win, is great. The film won the best film in Moscow, but it was not even nominated in any of the other awards, and to get the biggest award in India, which is the national award for the best Hindi film, means something to us.
When asked if the snub from awards earlier was demotivating, the filmmaker says, “I was very confident I made a good film because the reaction in the box office collections also showed it to me. It’s one of the highest-collection films for Raj (Rajkummar Rao) also, and he was praised. Even the critics praised the film. So I know that I had made a good film; no doubt, there was no doubt in my mind. I think the doubt was in the minds of the jury of the other awards.”
Nidhi adds, “I think that there are two things to it. I don’t think there was any question of our art to ourselves. There was never a question of what we are bringing to the table, what we are creating, what is our worth. I don’t think we take ourselves too seriously, but we also know that we give a hundred per cent to whatever we do, and we know we brought a hundred per cent to this. And we received a lot of love from the audience, so I think that was validation enough.”
“As far as honours go, I think that’s where the gap was. We didn’t get honoured by any other awards, but that’s okay because I think once you get the National Award it’s as large as it can be. You don’t need a higher honour than that. So I think our value was never in question; honour was, and we got that as well,” she concludes.
Srikanth was made under budget
Recalling the filming, Tushar shares, “Industry was going through a big time lull in that time and it was just after COVID had finished, and this is not your typical Bollywood film that anyone would you know back and it was tough. Bhushan (Bhushan Kumar) said that we need to cap the budget more than what it was earlier. We wanted to shoot the film in America, but we could not, so we cheated that for South Africa. We had to do a lot of adjustments, and the actual days the film was supposed to be shot were 65 days, and we shot it in 42 days.
Revealing how Bhushan Kumar acknowledged the fact that they wrapped up the film under budget, Tushar recalls, “In fact, even after capping the budget that Bhushan Kumar gave us we gave him almost 15 per cent back. He’s always said this: that he has produced so many films, but it was the first time that any production has given his money back. It’s always people go over budget, but we gave his money back, we went under budget. In all the films that he’s ever made this was the first time it happened.”