‘No reference point’: Nag Ashwin reveals hardships behind Rs 22 cr film Sing Geetham

Sing Geetham is a musical fantasy in which every character in the story communicates entirely through song. Not a film with songs inserted between scenes, but one where singing is the language itself. Nag Ashwin says there was genuinely no reference point for it. “We don’t have a reference idea for this film because there is nothing like this that has been done before,” he said.

That absence of a precedent created practical problems at every level. It took Ashwin and composer Devi Sri Prasad roughly a year just to understand the format well enough to execute it. Actors had to learn to deliver emotion through song while simultaneously performing, which Ashwin described as one of the harder technical challenges of the entire production. Timing a line is one thing. Singing it with the same spontaneity and truth is something else entirely.

“The challenge is the format of fulfilment itself,” Nag Ashwin said, adding, “We need to keep the soul of what Singeetham Srinivasa Rao is trying to do. What he always does is humour and fun. Lots of fun, with some humanity in it. This is not a gimmick. We are not making a musical film for the sake of making a musical film. Singeetham is not doing it for the sake of it either.”

Even in the final stretch of production, the process was not locked down. Ashwin described moments of on-the-spot improvisation, with the music director and writer making last-minute changes during filming to get scenes to land the way they needed to.

Shooting with a director who could not always be there

Getting Singeetham Srinivasa Rao through a full production at the age of 94 required accommodation and improvisation. Shooting in Chennai worked well enough. Hyderabad was harder. Nag Ashwin explained, “When the director could not travel, a virtual monitor was set up at his home, and Singeetham guided actors and crew through a headset, watching the shoot remotely and directing from a distance. For the majority of the production, however, he was physically present on set.”

Then, in the final two months, his health got in the way. He developed a cough that worsened into an infection. “He lost a little weight but that didn’t dampen his spirits. His passion is infectious,” Ashwin recalled.

The shoot wrapped across approximately 77 to 78 days, on a budget estimated at around Rs 22 crore.

A film made with passion for craft

When asked whether Sing Geetham could offer Telugu cinema a way out of its current commercial template, one defined by increasingly formulaic big-budget productions chasing predictable returns, Nag Ashwin made a point that he was not making a film to fix an industry. “We are making the cinema because we love the craft. We are not making this to change the society or the way craft happens. The change we are referring to should happen organically,” he said.

He pointed to Pushpaka Vimana, Singeetham Srinivasa Rao’s landmark 1987 silent comedy, as an example of what he meant. The film was made four decades ago and is still considered one of Indian cinema’s most original works. Yet no one attempted anything like it again in the years that followed. “It was not because of lack of possibility,” he said.

“At the end of the day, we just want to contribute to the art we are passionate about,” Ashwin added.

A dream forty years in the making

The fact that Sing Geetham exists at all is the result of a conversation that happened roughly four decades ago. According to Nag Ashwin, Singeetham Srinivasa Rao first spoke about this idea in a discussion with Kamal Haasan. It stayed with the director as an unrealised vision, the kind of concept too unconventional to find a home in mainstream production. What finally brought it to life was Ashwin’s willingness to back it without conditions. “Singeetham sir is way ahead of all of us,” Ashwin said, adding, “His concepts are timeless. How does something conceived forty years ago still feel like it belongs to the next generation? That is who he is.”

Also Read: Made for Rs 15 lakh, Kamal Haasan, Singeetham’s pathbreaking film earned 6.6x its budget

The film follows a young man named Prathap who travels to a mysterious village called Kubera Puram in search of better opportunities, only to be drawn into uncontrollable events stemming from a curse that forces everyone in the village to communicate through song. The conflict between the outside world and this magical realm forces him to choose between modern reality and a fantasy he was never prepared for.

Singeetham Srinivasa Rao described the film to Nag Ashwin in one line. “Never before in Indian cinema,” he said. That became the standard the production held itself to. “In my head, I always wanted to collaborate with Singeetham sir to make a sequel of Aditya 369. However, he would dismiss it, saying there is no dearth of experimental stories to make. That is the kind of legend he is.” Ashwin concluded.

Sing Geetham is slated to worldwide release this Friday, and stars debutant Ayaan alongside Ahilya Bamroo and Shalini Kondepudi, with music by Devi Sri Prasad.