‘My film is about a journalist vs a cop’: director Sagar Kumar

A teaser of actor Kishore’s latest film, ‘Anamadheya Ashok Kumar’, was released earlier this week. The actor plays a journalist who is suspected of murder. A scene from the video shows an interesting exchange between a cop (played by Harshil Koushik) and Kishore’s character. 

“A journalist visits a lawyer for an interview. Around the same time the lawyer is murdered. As the journalist in on location, he becomes the primary suspect. The cop attempts to figure out if he is a victim, witness or criminal,” director Sagar Kumar tells Showtime, adding, “Cops and journalists must work together, yet there is a clash of egos when they face each other. We’ve tried to portray that,” he adds. 

The roles we play in society shape our ideologies, Sagar believes. The film brings together two such ideologies. “As someone working for the government, a cop’s outlook on life is very different from that of a journalist, whose job is to question the government. Similarly, the common man will have different opinions about the system,” he notes.

Sagar is curious about real life stories. He once read a news article about a family who, after filing a complaint against perpetrators, end up becoming victims. In the article, unidentified bodies or criminals were given the name ‘Ashok Kumar’ — the Indian equivalent of a ‘John Doe’. 

“I had my film’s title even before the story,” he quips. He added the word ‘anamadheya’ which translates to ‘anonymous’. The title comes with the tagline, ‘Justice is a matter of perspective’. 

Sagar, who always had a keen interest in narrating stories, learned filmmaking through YouTube and by working on his friends’ films. His recent short film ‘Varadi’ was nominated for the SIIMA short film awards. He hails from Shivamogga and has worked in the IT sector for about seven years. Two days into production in 2022, the film came to halt owing to personal reasons. Kishore was then tied up with other projects for a year. 

Recalling the first day of shooting with Kishore, Sagar says, “I explained to him the scenes we would be shooting that day. When I had just said ‘action’ and the camera was rolling, I realised I hadn’t explained his character in detail. I didn’t want to stop because it was the first shot and that too a long one. But as soon as we started shooting, he was completely in the character. I didn’t have to revise it at all,” he recalls, adding that it was an easy and smooth process working with the actor. 

‘Anamadheya Ashok Kumar’ is set to release in theatres on February 7.