After a mixed response to his romantic film Premachi Gosht, Satish Rajwade returns with his next film Popat, due to release in theatres on August 23. Deviating from his comfort zone of movies set on an urban backdrop, Popat sees Satish venture into something new and promises to deliver something fresh.
“I have been labelled as an urban filmmaker with city centric plots. With Popat, it is my attempt to showcase a story in a rural backdrop with a rural dialect. It is a highly inspiring story and will appeal to a larger section of the audience,” he said.
Popat is a story of four friends who decide to make a film to boost their prospects of success in life. The film showcases the process, during which the four become really close and also changes their perspective about life. The film stars Atul Kulkarni, who was the lead in Satish’s Premachi Gosht along with young actors like Siddharth Menon, Amey Wagh and Ketan Pawar.
Describing the title of the film, Atul said, “The title is inspired from the Marathi word Popat itself. It means to make a fool of somebody and is intended in good spirit. However, the film goes beyond making you laugh and leads to self-introspection without much preaching.”
While Atul Kulkarni’s character of Jana Bhau enters the group a little later, the three friends, Balya, Raghu and Mukya, played by Siddharth, Amey and Ketan respectively, belong to a similar age-group and are thickest of friends.
Puneites are not strangers to these three young actors who have proven their mettle time and again through college plays and later through Natak Company’s plays. Siddharth was in the limelight recently after his film Peddlers was screened at Cannes Film Festival in 2012. Ketan, too, was appreciated for his role in Shala and Amey Wagh made it big starring alongside Rani Mukherji in Aiyyaa. Shooting for Popat was, however, a great coming together for old buddies on the big screen.
“You cannot call it a re-union because we are never apart. We work together a lot and probably you need to separate us more often to get us to work more,” says Amey on a lighter note.
Siddharth, however, says, “We are professionals above all. We are friends yes, but we are professional actors now.”
The combination of Satish Rajwade’s direction with the acting talent of Atul Kulkarni and the three musketeers will soon unfold on the screens before you.
