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Rishab Shetty’s popular Kannada film Kantara Chapter 1 is all set to release on October 2. The film has been shot at live locations over 250 days, and Rishab has spent 5 years bringing these two projects to life. During the shooting of Kantara’s second installment, three artists from the film died, and that created a negative narrative around Rishab Shetty’s directorial. Now, in an exclusive interview with SCREEN, Rishab Shetty spoke about losing the three artistes. He also remembered the late Rakesh Poojary and said he was like a brother to him.
Talking about the negative narrative around the film, Rishab Shetty said, “I am an actor and a director, but I don’t have fan associations; I don’t have the fanbase to trend on Twitter. I am alone, working with my team. I don’t know how to set a narrative, and I am not interested either. If someone thinks anything’s wrong, it’s okay. I put more energy into work. We got this message about a negative narrative set around the film after 2-3 days, we were not in the network; we were shooting inside a forest. ”
Speaking about the deaths, he said, “Definitely it’s a huge loss, but we cannot connect it to the film. It’s about human life, out of the three people we lost, two were junior artists, one of them had not even reached our set, he was on the way when he had some health issues, and later we got to know he had a heart attack. We sent the manager there to take him to the hospital and get the post-mortem and other formalities sorted.”
Rishab said that the second death didn’t happen on the set. “There was another man from Kerala, I remember his face, it was a night shoot, and his accident didn’t happen on our set. We were rehearsing in another town, there was a temple, and a river was close by. There was a board that said it was an accident-prone area, but youngsters want to explore; he went there, and the accident happened. He had shot with me multiple times,” Rishab Shetty said.
Talking about Rakesh Poojary’s demise, the Kantara actor fondly remembered his co-star and said, “Rakesh Poojary’s loss was huge; he has played a prominent character in the film. He was with me for many days and was like my brother. He was very committed right from the time of rehearsals. I never saw someone who was so positive. Good people leave us soon; that’s what happened. I was not able to digest his loss. I had planned to work more with him; he was a great artiste, and his loss affected us emotionally.” Rakesh Poojary had died of a heart attack 15-20 days after he wrapped up shooting for Kantara Chapter 1. He was attending a friend’s wedding when the unfortunate incident happened.
With three artists losing their lives when the film was in production, a narrative on social media emerged that Kantara Chapter 1 was jinxed. Talking about the same, Rishab added, “Outside, a negative narrative got set about Kantara – a lot of people said a lot of things. It’s their perspective. Rakesh had gone home 15-20 days after completing the shoot. I took a risk that time; there was a possibility of the film getting negative publicity, and our team was constantly in touch with the media. But we got saved, god was blessing us. Just one thing surfaced on social media, and many assumptions came up then.”
Kantara Chapter 1 will be released in multiple languages across India.
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