I want cinema to be a discussion point, says LGBT: A Legal Battle director
On the sidelines of the screening of LGBT: A Legal Battle recently organised by the Vizag Film Society in the city, award-winning director P. Suneel
On the sidelines of the screening of LGBT: A Legal Battle recently organised by the Vizag Film Society in the city, award-winning director P. Suneel Kumar Reddy spoke to The Hindu about the making of the film, the challenges faced by the transgender community, and where his career goes next. Reddy, an engineer by training who once ran a newspaper in Visakhapatnam, entered the film industry in 2000. Twenty-six years and 27 films later, he still describes himself as a journalist at heart. “For me, every film is a journalistic pursuit,” he said. “I research a subject point by point and learn a great deal before I tell the story.” That research ethic has taken him across genres.
He began as a children’s filmmaker, with Hero (2003) travelling to the Cairo International Film Festival, before Sontha Ooru and Ganga Putrulu recast him as a maker of serious cinema, and later romantic crime dramas earned him a reputation for stories about young people. LGBT: A Legal Battle, a courtroom drama on the legal battles faced by transgender and gay individuals, marks his latest turn, and, he says, his most personally transformative. To prepare, he consulted Supreme Court advocates, sessions court judges and law faculty, and spent time in the community’s own spaces to understand its life beyond what is visible from the outside.
He also insisted on casting real transgender performers rather than cisgender actors. “I wanted to give the authenticity to the cinema,” he said. Reddy is emphatic that his films are not meant to instruct. “It is not to change the society but to help as a catalyst for the people,” he said. “I want cinema to be a discussion point rather than a point where we give answers to the questions.” That philosophy, he hopes, will now travel further. Sravya Films, his production banner, has partnered with Gradiente Infotainment Limited to dub LGBT: A Legal Battle into multiple Indian languages, ahead of an international release.
Born in Nellore, which he calls his janmabhoomi, Mr. Reddy considers North Andhra his karmabhoomi, the region where he grew up, studied and built his career. He remains invested in Visakhapatnam’s potential as a filmmaking hub, and continues to cast local and Uttarandhra-based artists in his work. His next project marks a return to where he began: a bilingual children’s science-fiction film in Telugu and Hindi, alongside a few other productions currently under discussion.
The BriefWire