Hemanth Rao: Sapta Sagaradaache Ello is a script I wrote to be my first film; glad I didn’t make it back then

Kannada filmmaker Hemanth M Rao is currently in the process of presenting his third film – Sapta Sagaradaache Ello – to audiences. A love story that stars Rakshit Shetty in the lead along with Rukmini Vasanth and Chaithra J Achar, Sapta Sagaradaache Ello (SSE) is coming out in two parts, with the first releasing on September 1 and the second on October 20. The story, says Hemanth, is one that he’d written several years ago and wanted to make as his directorial debut, actually.

In conversation with the online publication Kannada Pichhar, Hemanth recently spoke about how he is glad that he did not make the film back then. The script, he says, was written, after he’d worked on the Puneeth Rajkumar-starrer Prithvi as an associate, when he was confident that he had learnt the technical know-how to make a film. “I wrote this story with the intention of making it as my debut film. The writing had an innocence and naivety to it, I’d say, and owing to certain reasons, it could not be made as a film at that point. Honestly, I am quite happy that I didn’t make Sapta Sagaradaache Ello back then. Today, the way it has shaped up is entirely due to the time that I got to develop it. As a writer, I did not have it in me then to write it as poetic or as intense as it is today,” he reasons.

The years since, including the time he spent making two films – Godhi Banna Sadhara Mykattu and Kavaludaari – have been about learning, adds Hemanth. And now is the right time for Sapta Sagaradaache to finally come out, he says. The film, which he shot over a whopping 137 days spread over a couple of years (including pandemic delays and time needed for Rakshit to gain weight for the second half of the film) now has two parts, each of which is just around the 2 hour and 15-20 minutes mark in run time.