Kantara’s Singara Siriye: Rishab Shetty and Sapthami Gowda’s endearing chemistry is just spot on

Actor-filmmaker Rishab Shetty, who made his directorial debut in 2016 with Ricky, which he followed up soon enough with the superhit Kirik Party in the same year, then made Sarkari Hiriya Prathamika Shaale in 2018. Since then, Rishab has been quite active as an actor, but had also announced a couple of directorials, namely Rudraprayag and an untitled film with Shiva Rajkumar in the lead.

Rudraprayag, he had said, would be time consuming and could not take off at the time he’d planned, as he needed veteran actor Anant Nag for extensive schedules, which was not possible in the early stages of the Covid pandemic. Instead, he took up another project, called Kantara; set in the mysterious forest Kantara, and the people dependent on the jungle for a livelihood, it depicts a man vs nature as well as man vs man conflict.

The film, in which Rishab plays the lead, is his first big production, given that it has been backed by Hombale Films, the makers of biggies like KGF and Salaar, among others. Kantara has been announced as a September 30 release and given that Rishab finished the final edit a couple of weeks ago, it appears to be well on schedule to meet this date.

A teaser of the film had been released months ago, on the eve of the theatrical release of KGF: Chapter 2, which had caught the attention of audiences. And now, in the run up to the film’s theatrical release, Rishab has given audiences the first song Singara Siriye, including its full video, which captures the relationship between his character Shiva, and Sapthami Gowda’s Leela. Their chemistry is the highlight of the song, which has been composed by B Ajaneesh Loknath and sung by Vijay Prakash and Ananya Bhat. The film also has Kishore, Achyuth Kumar, Raghu Ramanakoppa and Pramod Shetty, among others, on its cast.