Director Vishal Mourya of recent popular movie DAMaN recently spoke to us exclusively on FIlmifever. He spoke about his plans to make DAMaN a pan India film looking at the success of the film. DAMaN film is spreading through word of mouth. DAMAn is an ODia movie. Theatres not only in Odisha but also outside it are witnessing housefull shows. Hence, looking at the success of the film, the filmmaker plans to release the film in other languages as well, first starting with Hindi.
He also said that if the Hindi version of the film goes well, they might plan to release the film in Tamil and Telugu languages as well. DAMan is a story of a doctor who goes to a remote village to provide services to people affected by malaria, how he becomes an hero, an inspiration to people, that is what we get to see in this film.
Babushaan Mohanty stars in the film along with DIpanwit Dashmohanpatra and others. DAMaN fIlm is made with a minimum budget of 1 crore. Director Vishal Mourya says they have done the film taking local people for acting. They wanted local people, tribal people as part of their film because they wanted to give a raw, natural feeling to the film.Locations were also taken, keeping the originality of the incident in mind. Scenes were shot in the location where the actual incident of malaria spread took place and where the rescue operations were on.
He says that he along with the another director of this film Debi Lenka Prasad first got to witness the incident of malaria spread in the Malkangiri deistrict of Odisha in 2020. They also saw the doctors response and the local people fight actions to the disease. That too when that area was completely disconnected from basic ammenities- a complete remote area. This is when he and other director decided to make a film on this, taking a story of a medical student in mind and in his journey to combat aganst the disease.
Film story was real, based on a real life incident in Odisha. There were no love story or a romantic angle to the film. Apart from this, there was no heroine too for this prokect. People were saying that such a kind of film won’t work. But staying committed throughout the filmmaking journey and believing in your idea, no matter what is what led to the success of Daman,
Vishal Mourya says. he also asked the film fraternity in Odisha to come out with original content based on local flavour and culutre. He says that our culture is so rich that there is no need to look for some outside story to take inspiration from. Vishal Mourya spoke about the trends in Odia cinema pattern before and after Covid-19.Before Corona, films were made on a 1 cr buget but now after corona, films are made on a small budget of 25 k also and their rights are sold to TV. Vishal Mourya says that till now Odia film industry used to focus only on love stories keeping the remote audience in mind. He called for a mature content to be available also for the educated masses in their language.
Vishal Mourya says that when they started making the film DAMaN they didn’t even expect about making it a pan India release. It was simply an Odia movie release. But now looking at the response of the audeince, audience demand, requests, he along with the other makers of DAMaN have decided to relase it in other lanhgueages. Director VIshal Mourya says that Odia film insustry is one of the oldest film industries in India and there is a need to keep the flavour of Odia cinema alive by giving preference to origiinal regional content. He also called for more support and encouragement from the audeince that will help the Odia industry grow big. He thanked producer Deependra Samal for investing in their film and also believing itn their project when no else did.
Watch the video presentation of the article down in the link below:
(Video Credits; Filmifever)
