How Premalu Offers A Refreshing Take On Hyderabad That's Rather Rare In Telugu Cinema

IN GIRISH AD’s blockbuster Malayalam film, Premalu, there’s a scene quite early in the story where Amal Davis (Sangeeth Prathap) encourages Sachin (Naslen Gafoor) to join him for GATE coaching to escape the boredom and constant taunting at Sachin’s home in a town in Kerala. When Sachin asks if the coaching centre is in Kerala, Amal tells him it’s in Hyderabad, a city quite alien to Sachin. His reaction is meant to drive home a feeling that Sachin is clueless about what to expect in Hyderabad. In a transition shot of an office building in Hyderabad later, we are introduced to Reenu (Mamitha Baiju), a newbie in an IT company in the city. A little later, her colleague Aadhi (Shyam Mohan) tells her that Hyderabad is a wonderful city to be in.

With this introduction of the principal characters, director Girish sets the stage for Sachin to fall in love with Reenu and at the same time with Hyderabad. And that makes all the difference to how the film portrays the city.

The underlying messaging is that Hyderabad isn’t just another metro, it’s a city which Reenu herself has taken an instant liking to. And for Sachin, this means that Hyderabad is a city where he can find love again.

Premalu is among a select few Malayalam films largely set in Hyderabad, and perhaps the first to explore the lives of young Malayalis who have migrated to the city for work. Although the film is mostly insulated from the Telugu-speaking population, except for a select few characters who occasionally speak a line or two, it quite closely captures the spirit of Hyderabad which takes everyone into its fold openly. The landscape of Hyderabad shown in the film essentially focuses on it being the IT hub, thus giving the city a different look.

That a Malayalam film has managed to do it, more than most Telugu films in recent times, is a pleasant surprise even in the Telugu film circle. To Girish AD and cinematographer Ajmal Sabu’s credit, Premalu has comparatively many outdoor shots of the city. That makes one wonder how they pulled off this feat in a city they haven’t shot before. One of the film's production team members says that Girish’s brief to the team was pretty clear — he didn’t want to shoot in any set or studio. And, Ajmal Sabu ensured that he had minimal requirements in terms of lights or equipment which helped the team to be constantly on the move to shoot wherever they wanted. The team ended up covering a vast portion of the city, right from its major landmarks to the bylanes.

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It’s no secret that it’s hard and sometimes even impractical to shoot outdoors in Hyderabad, especially with well-known actors at the shooting spot. Securing permissions, especially in crowded areas and open roads, in the city comes with its own set of challenges, apart from employing additional crew members to control the crowd. It’s little wonder that most films are shot in studios or in areas where all these parameters are under control, and schedule the exterior shoot after wrapping up most of the other segments of the shoot. Premalu’s team certainly had an edge in this sense considering that all the actors were new to Telugu audiences before the film’s release, and since the crew was small, they could shoot a lot more in outdoor locations.

Beyond the logistics and economics of filmmaking, Premalu also highlights the gaze that filmmakers use while depicting a city where the story is set. In this context, the visual imagery of Hyderabad in Telugu cinema merits a closer look. It wasn't until the late 1980s that most filmmakers and actors moved to Hyderabad from Madras, the former hub for the Telugu film industry. Films made in the late 80s and early 90s were shot in and around Jubilee Hills, Filmnagar, Ameerpet which is where the four prominent studios — Annapurna Studios, Ramanaidu Studios, Padmalaya Studios and Sarathy Studios — are located, and the Hyderabad of that era is almost unrecognisable when you see those films today. And when films weren’t solely shot in the studios, you would see landmarks like Charminar, Birla Mandir, the Legislative Assembly, and Nehru Zoological Park among others.

Around the same time, another stereotype emerged where the old city became synonymous with violence, criminals and backwardness, and the stories, well into the 2000s, often portrayed this part of Hyderabad as the villain’s lair. Interestingly, films like Mahesh Babu’s Okkadu, and The Angrez brought forth a different flavour to how the old city was depicted. While Okkadu has its lead protagonist as a resident within the old city who must rescue a young woman from the clutches of a faction leader from Rayalaseema, The Angrez focuses on the lighter side of Dakhani speakers in the old city where a group of friends must avenge their humiliation at the hands of a couple of NRIs. Then, there were also filmmakers like Sekhar Kammula who grounded their characters and landscape in areas around Secunderabad in films like Anand, Godavari, and Happy Days.

The software and real estate boom of the 2000s also led to the emergence of a new Hyderabad, where many youngsters from the hinterlands of former United Andhra Pradesh came to the city for work, and such themes became commonplace in Telugu cinema. For instance, their job might be in Hyderabad, but their home is in parts of coastal Andhra Pradesh or Rayalaseema. So, the lead characters juggle between these geographies. In the last decade, another trend began emerging with films like Tharun Bhascker’s Pellichoopulu, Ee Nagaraniki Emaindhi and Vishwak Sen’s Falaknuma Das where Hyderabad comes across as a more peppy city and characters are more rooted and quite familiar with the geography where the story is set in. But largely, in contemporary Telugu films, despite showcasing the various landmarks, the city of Hyderabad becomes invisible after a while as the plot and characters take centre stage.

The more you think about Premalu and how it portrayed Hyderabad, compared to most Telugu films, it makes you wonder — what makes a city unique? Is it the people that inhabit the vast space? Or is it the city’s legacy, architecture and culture? Or is it the food, distinct sights, sounds and smells that give cities their uniqueness? In Premalu, Hyderabad comes across as a city of love and joy, where you can find yourself, even if you go there to stay for a short duration. It’s best captured in a dialogue where Sachin says, “I can’t leave Hyderabad, where Reenu lives.” That line resonates throughout the film.