Daredevil Mushtafa: 'Shankar Nag's Malgudi Days will always remain the benchmark for period settings'

For filmmaker Shashank Soghal, the heart of Poornachandra Tejaswi's Daredevil Musthafa is its innocence. "I think innocence is the operative word because you are dealing with a really sensitive subject here. The short story, which was published way back in the early 1970s, was ahead of its time and spoke about a really tricky matter which is relevant more than today. How a Muslim boy's entry into an insulated world changes the course of things is beautifully captured, but not in an aggressive or radicalised form. The author is quite 'light-hearted' in his approach and we had to channel that innocence while conceiving our film," says Shashank, describing the unique world of Poornachandra Tejaswi.

The trailer of Daredevil Musthafa, the cinematic adaptation, takes a few creative liberties and even expands the world that Poochante created. Aside from the usual suspects of the story such as Jamal Abdul Musthafa, Ramanuja Iyengar and others, Shashank Soghal and his co-writers Anantha Shandreya and Raghavendra Mayakonda have added a few characters and extrapolated on the themes that the short story tackles. And the ethos that the film represents is quite akin to that of Shankar Nag's iconic tele serial Malgudi Days, an adaptation of R.K. Narayan's most vibrant and alluring novel of the same name. 

"It is important to take the audience to the Poochante world and for that, the look and feel is quite important. Even though it looks quite 'retro', we have refrained from specifying the year it is set - it could be the '70s, '80s or even today. And in this case, you cannot help but draw inspiration from Malgudi Days, the serial, because you have grown up watching and adoring it. It probably happens quite subconsciously that you are influenced by that show - be it the innocence, the affableness or the period setting - but there's no denying that Shankar Nag sir has set the benchmark for Kannada films when it comes to period backdrops," adds Shashank Soghal.

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And perhaps that is why the team of Daredevil Musthafa managed to attract not one but more than 70 of Poornachandra Tejaswi's readers and ardent lovers to produce the film. Crowd-funded with close to 100 participants (including the 70+ readers), the upcoming film is a bona fide 'by the crowd, for the crowd' kind of a film, says Shashank.