Andharan: Prajin headlines a June 25 thriller built on a real case

Andharan, a crime thriller fronted by Prajin, opens in cinemas worldwide on June 25, and the cast and crew gathered in Chennai to set it up. The film carries an English tag, The Hunter, and that is the whole idea: director Santhosh Raavanan describes the title as someone who strikes from concealment, and the story as one of those things people walk past every day and only take seriously once the damage is done. He is also blunt that this is not a routine thriller, because the plot is lifted from a court case that is still being heard.

Produced by M.K. Sambasivam under his Shri Krish Pictures banner, Andharan is his third film after Adavi and Manithargal. Its road to the screen was not short. Santhosh first emailed the script to Sambasivam, who read it, liked it, and said he could not take it on at the time. Six months later Sambasivam called back: the Telugu actor Rajendra Prasad was visiting, would the director narrate it to him? Rajendra Prasad heard it, backed it, and that endorsement was what finally got the production moving. He stays on in the film as Shankar, the heroine’s father, a part written to swing between hero and villain.

Santhosh is guarding the specifics. He says he has not shared the details of the real case with anyone, not even his producer, and will only open up once the film has worked. What he will promise is a climax with the kind of twist that powered Ratsasan, Por Thozhil and Thegidi, and a film that is structured as a thriller but played out romantically, with plenty of love scenes whose reason only becomes clear at the end. The story, he says, carries a point worth making about everyday danger, dressed as a genre piece.

Ivana Varun leads opposite Prajin in her first film, and she called the shoot the kind of experience she will not forget. Anupama Kumar, ‘Aruvi’ Bala, Ramesh Babu, Arjun Dev, Priyanka Selvi, Aishwarya Kannan, Adhiran, Padman and VJ Raju fill out a large ensemble. Kishore Ramachandran is the cinematographer, Hari S R the composer, Ignatious Aswin and Satish Kurosava the editors, and Sasikumar the art director. One detail from the floor stuck: the director says he and his leading lady never spoke to each other directly, since she works in Hindi and he in English, so a bilingual assistant relayed every instruction between them, and he is confident none of that friction shows on screen.

The producer C.V. Kumar, who has spent a career handing first films to newcomers, came on as the project’s sounding board. Santhosh had worked in his office before the pandemic, and when Sambasivam called to say the story this old colleague had pitched was good, Kumar vouched for him and suggested both additions to the script and a wider net of actors and technicians. He also pushed back on the title, arguing that a name should not need explaining, until Sambasivam told him his wife had picked Andharan by drawing a chit at a temple and it was not up for negotiation, at which Kumar laughed and let it go. He says he has seen the finished film and could not call the ending early.

For Prajin, who has been at this twenty years and is still chasing the Friday that turns things around, the film is a bet he sounds sure about. His Bigg Boss housemates ‘Vikkals’ Vikram and Sabari turned up as guests, Vikram hoping Andharan marks a before-and-after line in Prajin’s career the way the show once did. Sambasivam used his turn to make a request of distributors and streaming buyers: do not write off a film just because it has no stars attached, since every name at the top was once a newcomer too. Andharan reaches theatres on June 25.