Filmmaker Ravi Jadhav: I am making sure that my second Hindi film has a pan-India appeal

The National Award-winning director says that his 2016 film Banjo was originally written and conceptualised as a Marathi film, which turned into a Hindi film during the production process.

His maiden Hindi directorial venture, Banjo (2016), was not able to create box-office magic and National Award-winning Marathi filmmaker Ravi Jadhav says that the failure taught him a very valuable lesson — always make a film keeping the pan-India audience in mind. Now he’s writing his second Hindi film with that perspective in mind.

Marathi filmmaker Ravi Jadhav has directed films like Natarang, Balgandharva, and Balak-Palak.(Photo: Puneet Chandhok/ HT)

The director-writer is busy with two Marathi films — one is his “collaboration” with actor Riteish Deshmukh; and the other is produced and directed by him. “I’m also writing something in Hindi, and very soon I’ll be ready with my second Hindi project,” adds Jadhav, whose debut film, Natarang, bagged the 2009 National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Marathi.

About the failure of his first Hindi film, starring Riteish and Nargis Fakhri, the filmmaker says, “Banjo was originally written and conceptualised as a Marathi film, and it lost that essence once it was decided to be made into a Hindi film.” The loss of this “Marathiness in the story”, he believes, was “the major reason [for its failure].”

 

Jadhav continues, “So, now I’m making sure that whatever I’m writing, I’ll be thinking about a pan-India audience. I normally think and write in Marathi. [Banjo] wasn’t a universal concept. The film didn’t do well at the box office; that was a learning and I’ve taken it very positively.”

Films made in regional languages often bear the brunt of the uneven screen distribution system in the country. Jadhav acknowledges that as a major problem for regional films and filmmakers, but feels there’s also a solution in the form of various online platforms. “Those platforms are above all the distribution systems,” he says. “Anyone will be able to watch your content if they are available on this medium. And not just in India, it will be available for audiences across the world.”

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