Director Ritesh Rana promises a fun ride with ‘Happy Birthday’ starring Lavanya Tripathi and opens up on its link with ‘Mathu Vadalara’

Author and director Ritesh Rana considers his maiden Telugu movie, the 2019 crime comedy Mathu Vadalara, his calling card. He hopes that his second movie Comfortable Birthdaywhich he describes as a surreal crime comedy thriller, will assist cement his place in Telugu cinema: “I wish to narrate totally different sorts of tales and construct an viewers that will stay up for my movies.” Comfortable Birthday stars Lavanya Tripathi as Comfortable and she or he is accompanied by Naresh Agastya, Satya and Vennela Kishore.

Ritesh grew up in Hyderabad watching Chiranjeevi movies, since his relations have been big followers of the star. Mathu Vadalara had a handful of references to Chiranjeevi hits. Later, he was fascinated by director Chandrashekhar Yeleti’s crime drama aithe: “I watched the movie in my Class X holidays and was awestruck. Yeleti was an inspiration for me to enter the cinema. By the way, Cherry, who produced Yeleti’s Okkadunnadu, is among the producers (as a part of Mythri Film Makers) for my movies.”

An ardent film buff, Ritesh used to share his ideas on cinema on IMDB dialogue boards. After graduating with B.Com (Hons), he took up an animation course and a distance training program in MA Mass Communication from Sikkim Manipal College: “The animation course additionally launched me to modifying; I made a brief movie as a part of venture work. All this helped me be taught the fundamentals of filmmaking.”

Ritesh Cinematic Universe?

Each Mathu Vadalara and Comfortable Birthday are unconventional crime capers and Ritesh reveals that there’s a hyperlink between the 2 movies. Those that have watched Mathu… would bear in mind the operating joke within the type of an eccentric tv serial within the movie, referred to as Ore naa kodakathrough which the husband is shot on his brow in an preliminary scene however undertakes a protracted, harrowing and hilarious journey, with out succumbing: “ Comfortable Birthday’s story discusses the usage of weapons and on this surreal world we created, the couple from that tv serial are actual characters.”

Director Lokesh Kanagaraj lately linked his earlier Tamil movie Kaithi with the story he wrote for Kamal Haasan-starrer Vikram and in flip related it to the 1986 Kamal movie of the identical identify, thereby creating what his followers time period as an LKU (Lokesh Kanagaraj Universe). Ritesh downplays any such grandiose comparisons and maintains that it is a small movie. Each movies use a wide range of weapons, albeit in several contexts.

For a hypothetical gun market in Comfortable Birthday, the manufacturing crew sourced a number of weapons: “We would have liked 300 to 400 weapons and kilos of bullets. We sourced weapons with permission from those that hire weapons for movie shootings. Identical to there are a number of manufacturers and variants of cellphones, there is no such thing as a dearth of weapons. We bought specialised weapons in shades of gold, silver and diamond-studded ones,” says Ritesh. The trailer additionally reveals glimpses of a sweet pink gun.

Dignified comedy

Vennela Kishore as minister Rithwik Sodhi in ‘Comfortable Birthday’ | Picture Credit score: Particular Association

Lots of Ritesh’s collaborators from Mathu Vadalara are additionally part of Comfortable Birthday – corresponding to music composer Kaala Bhairava, co-writer Teja, actors Satya, Vennela Kishore and Naresh Agastya. For the a part of a politician who talks about legalising gun tradition, Ritesh felt Vennela Kishore might pull off “the dignified comedy” and says he’s a fan of Satya’s comedian timing as nicely. Lavanya Tripathi was solid after he noticed her in a tv interview, letting her humorous facet shine: “Most movies she has acted in haven’t explored her enjoyable facet,” says Ritesh.

To enrich the wacky story, the manufacturing crew designed 13 quirky and colour-coded units. Ritesh is a fan of manufacturing design in Wes Anderson movies and says the crew went all out to attempt one thing new: “Part of the story occurs in a resort and a few elements on the streets. The story is non-linear, narrated as chapters and totally different segments required totally different colour schemes.”

Requested if the story explores the aftermath of legalising gun tradition within the surreal world, Ritesh clams up: “Something I say will give away an excessive amount of concerning the story. I can simply say that the humorous content material can have the viewers laughing for probably the most a part of the movie.”