The Kerala Story EXCLUSIVE! Vipul Shah Is All Praise For Adah Sharma, Sudipto Sen: He Was Living With...

The Kerala Story OTT Release: After raking in big moolah at the box office, The Kerala Story premiered on ZEE 5 last month. The film starring Adah Sharma had set the cash registers jingling when it released in 2023.

As The Kerala Story received a decent response from the audience upon its digital premiere on ZEE5, Filmibeat interacted with Vipul Shah. The ace filmmaker shared his thoughts about teaming up with Sudipto Sen and Adah and spilled the beans on his experience while shooting with the duo.

Here are excepts from the interview!

Tell us about the cast and crew - Sudipto Sen, Adah Sharma and others. How collaborative was the process? How was the experience working with them? Anything you would like to share about them that is a lesser-known fact?

So I met Sudipto Sen when he got me this one pager and then we decided to develop this Into a full fledged script . I came on board as a writer . Sudipto is a wonderful , collaborative guy . He allows every positive idea to flow into the script and even as a director he accepts any suggestion given by anybody who is contributing to the positivity of the film . It has been a great joy working with him because you very rarely find people who are so open minded to your suggestion. I became the creative director of the film only and only because Dada as i call him allowed me to become one . We have been great together and that's how we have made another film in less than one year and ready for release. So our partnership has been fantastic.

I really think that more people like Dada should be in industry who are very very open minded , do not have any ego whatsoever and allow you to collaborate with them . So its been a complete collaborative process . He has done great amount of work on the film before even it came to me . He has been living with this film for 8-9 years now . And yet he was open to my all ideas and suggestions. So is with Adah . Adah had given tremendous amount of time for rehearsals, workshops , research. She contributed in her own way in her performance and i think this is not my first project with her , we have worked on several projects before and i have always know her as a very disciplined and a dedicated artist so i think as a team not just Sudipto dada and Adah but all the other artists whether it was Sonia or Yogita or anybody we all worked together as a team. My dop , my background music , my music director, everybody . So its been a complete team work in that sense."

"How did you navigate the fine line between addressing a serious issue and ensuring the film did not contribute to misinformation or unrest or polarizing one state or community?

My job is to tell the truth , and tell it in the most honest way without any corruption, without ang dilution , without any balancing act , the truth as it is . If you are telling the truth and you are hundred percent sure that whatever you have said you can keep your hand on your heart and stand by that , then it does not spread misinformation because lies spread misinformation, truth doesn't . So when the film released , so many people saw it and it did such a big number there was no unrest in the country , there was no unfortunate incident or any kind of rioting or fighting or breaking of theatre or nothing, people watched it because the film the was true . And i keep harping this again and again because when you do that you have to be very very responsible about it , when your doing it . You have to ensure that whatever your saying there is no iota of lie in it and only then . People are very smart , they see through a propaganda or lie and they see something which is truthful, they connect very very strongly with it and that is exactly what happened with The Kerala Story."