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Sriram Raghavan: Didn’t expect Merry Christmas to get the same love as Andhadhun
Filmmaker Sriram Raghavan opens up about the mixed reception of his latest Katrina Kaif-starrer film
Filmmaker Sriram Raghavan was far from shocked when the audience called his last film, Merry Christmas (2024), slow. Raghavan, who collaborated on the film with actors Katrina Kaif and Vijay Sethupathi, admits that he knew the film would not appeal to everyone.
“You learn something with every film. Every film is just like your first film. That’s how this industry works. When it comes to my view, I try to look for some sort of variety in the kinds of subjects that I pick, even though they may all be in the thriller genre. There is a bit of variety,” Raghvan tells us.
He adds, “For instance, Merry Christmas was a love story in the guise of a thriller. That got me excited. Some people loved it, some people found it slow, but that was something which I wanted to do."
Opening up about the response further, the director, who has made a name for himself in the thriller genre, shares, “It’s fine. We have to accept it. It was not like Andhadhun, which got so much love from all quarters. I was not even expecting the same love that Andhadhun got. But it was the success of Andhadhun that encouraged me to do something experimental and riskier. I did know that certain people will find the film slow. But in my heart, I was hoping that the film will work on the big screen and will find its audience. That being said, it has its own value, and I am fine with the response that the film got”.
Andhadhun (2018) starring Ayushmann Khurrana, Tabu and Radika Apte, released in 2018 was a global success. There are times when a film finds an audience much later, but the filmmaker is not hoping for that in the case Merry Christmas.
“I don’t know. For example, when I was a kid, my parents took me to watch a black and white film. At that time, it didn’t excite me but today it is a classic…. Now, because of OTT platforms, the films are there for the audience. Now, there is a Tamil version of Merry Christmas, it will be interesting for me to see how that is perceived,” says the director, who recently curated the Red Lorry Film Festival, scheduled for next month.
Talking about the festival, he says, “The primary job of a film festival is to collect a lot of film lovers and so that there’s communal viewing and interaction. That was my intention with this one, as I focussed on getting a lot of thriller films together from all the eras, back to 1947 to the most recent ones."
