N Phanindra

Making one’s debut while donning the two complicated hats of being a movie director as well as screenplay writer requires a lot of grit and determination and N. Phanindra is one such person. Hailing from a small village near Chennai in Tamil Nadu, N Phanindra always wanted to make it in the entertainment domain. As a kid, he says that he remembers how excited he used to get thinking about cinema (as it was called then). Pocket money had always been a luxury but he used to somehow manage enough to watch at least one movie in two to three months and it used to seem enough. Such was the dedication and when he could finally watch one, Phanindra reminisces how euphoric it used to seem to him. Phanindra always took keen interest in the plots that the movies had.

He always used to think about alternate endings and plot twists that the movies could have had; little did he realise that it was the signs of a budding screenplay writer. Such was his acumen of seeing through a movie’s plot that he could easily grasp the story of a thriller and guess on the ending it could have had. But as they say, money is an important thing and hence this dream of being in the entertainment industry was put on a back burner and Phanindra got busy in earning a living for his family. But, what is a dream if it lets you sleep and so one fine day, when he was busy with his usual office chores, Phanindra thought, why not make a movie. Phanindra wanted to make a “true to its core” entertainer and hence he came up with the idea of a thriller movie involving youngsters with a drug dealing racket at the centre of it.

The key to the movie: well it is not your usual all white movie but its characters have a shade of grey to it, something which makes the movie closer to reality. Phanindra made a decent attempt at it but the industry is competitive and he realises it. The movie was not exactly a debacle, but it could not do well. Phanindra, being the fighter that he is says, “I will not bog down and I have only to learn which I will.” We wish him all the best and look forward to having better entertaining pieces from him.