Roopa Rao on Sahadev Kelvadi winning the Dada Saheb Phalke Best Director Award for the Kannada film Kenda: ‘I am thrilled about the win’

Roopa Rao on Sahadev Kelvadi winning the Dada Saheb Phalke Best Director Award for the Kannada film Kenda: ‘I am thrilled about the win’

Roopa Rao’s name stands out in the primarily male-dominated world of cinema. The petite filmmaker is a writer, director and producer. A project manager with Infosys, Roopa quit her IT job and started her cinematic career with the web-series, The Other Love Story (2016).

The show was followed by the award-winning Kannada film Gantumoote (2019), which talks about the pressures of excelling in academics. Roopa who had written and directed the film also produced it with Sahadev Kelavadi, the film’s cinematographer.

Sahadev has written and directed Kenda, which is Roopa’s third project as producer. The yet-to-be-released film was screened at the Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival in April in New Delhi and Sahadev won the Dada Saheb Phalke Best Debut Director Award.

“I am thrilled about the win for Kenda,” says Roopa as she navigates traffic in Bengaluru. She is headed for the shoot of a Hindi film she is executive producing. “I cannot share the details but we are five days into the shoot.”

Kenda’s win is a great feeling, says Roopa. “It is a reassurance that we are on the right path and telling the right stories. The award has encouraged us to make more such films.”

Having started their film journey together, Roopa says she has known Sahadev for over a decade. “Sahadev has been telling me Kenda’s story since the time we first met. I knew the story inside out and knew how he wanted to portray it cinematically.”

The partnership, Roopa says works, because the two have similar thought processes while being individually different.