Anu Prabhakar to come back with Aarna Saadya's next

The movie has been adapated from novelist Saara Abubakkar’s book ‘Vajragalu’

Bengaluru-based director Aarna Saadya is drawn to subjects with strong social relevance. She chases stories that are inspired by real-life incidents and people who have managed to bring about a positive change in society.

While her previous project was based on the child helpline number 1098, her latest film, ‘Sara Vajra’, featuring actors Anu Prabhakar, Sudha Belwadi, Rehmaan Hassan and Ramesh Bhat in the lead roles, is based on well-known novelist Saara Abubakkar’s work ‘Vajragalu’.

‘Vajragalu’ is a story of a woman who braves all odds in her life and emerges strong.

The instances that occur in the woman’s life is what prompted the director to adapt it into a film.

After Aarna was ready with the script, she approached a couple of actors, who instead of reading the novel and understanding the story, were more interested in knowing about the remuneration. But eventually, she met actor Anu Prabhakar, who after reading the novel, agreed to act in the film.

Anu chooses films that are performance-oriented and offer her a strong character. She will make a comeback into the film industry after a long gap, with this film, where she will be playing the role of Nafisa. Ramesh Bhat portrays Anu’s father and Sudha Belawadi her mother in the film.

Talking about how the script was finalised, Aarna says that she first met writer Sara in 2017. After much thought, Sara decided to sell the rights for the film.

Aarna notes that films based on novels have done well in the past but directors don’t attempt it because it is a long-drawn-out process. “There are films that are categorised as art, novel, commercial and offbeat. There’s a definite audience for all categories of films. Some of my earlier films like ‘1098’ did well because we dealt with child labour and issues around it. Today, experimental and offbeat scripts sell well,” Aarna tells Metrolife. The novel is based on the Byari community in Kasargod, near Mangaluru. She explains, “We decided to shoot where the community lives and used one of the houses there. We’ve adapted their dialect, way of life and dressing style. We could pull off the shoot because of the support shown by the people of the community, who also made sure that there were no disruptions during the shoot.”

Aarna points out that the story has strong content and talks about a woman who is divorced at a young age. “What humiliations she goes through and how the society perceives such women forms the heart of the subject. It was visually challenging to get the actors to resemble the characters we had in mind. But everyone has done a great job in portraying the characters,” she says.

The music for the film is by V Manohar and lyrics by Haneef and V Nagendra Prasad, who has also written the screenplay and dialogues for the movie. The director of photography is Paramesh CM and the choreographer is Madan Harini. The film is slated to release in June.