‘JP’ Wouldn’t Have Materialized Without Suma

Suma Kanakala is making re-entry to films with village drama movie Jayamma Panchayathi. Directed by Vijay Kumar Kalivarapu, the film will hit the screens on May 6th. Interim, as part of promotions, director Vijay interacted with media to share interesting aspects of the movie.

The director says he entered the industry with the dream of making movies with big stars. “I somehow realized that, I need to prove myself first with a small-time movie. I wanted to make the movie with a budget around 60 lakhs. I didn’t imagine that, the subject has the potentiality of popular anchor Suma coming on board to play the lead role and a leading musician like MM Keeravani scoring music for it.”

The film also got the support of several industry biggies who launched different promotional content. “I also didn’t expect that biggies like Pawan Kalyan, Varun Tej, Rajamouli, Trivikram etc. would lend support for the film.”

He says without good casting it’s tough for a film to have wide reach. “Suma liked the script, just after 10 mins of narration. We did test shoot. But I had my own doubts, whether she can rightly fit the bill of a rustic woman. However, she played the role effortlessly. Jayamma Panchayathi wouldn’t have materialized, without Suma. Audience will instantly get connected to the character. She played a serious role. However, her acts bring laughs to us.”

Vijay affirms most of the characters in the movie are based on real characters in his village. About the conflicting point of the movie, he reveals, “Jayamma is a tough woman who fights for justice. Her resolution disturbs the entire village. The story is about what extent she went to get her work done.”

The director informs Keeravani too accepted to score music for the movie, after going through the full script. “The film has 4 songs which all are situational. They are big add-on for the film.”

About Suma, Vijay says, “She is very quick learner and can perform anything. The biggest challenge was to shoot the movie with synch-sound technology, which doesn’t require actors to dub for their characters again. We did one month workshop, as we wanted actors to be prepared for synch-sound technology.”

Vijay Kumar says the message he received from Sukumar, after the release of the film’s trailer, is the biggest complement he got so far.