Anant Mahadevan to direct his first Marathi film on 'The Mother Teresa of Maharashtra'

Looks like the success of Harishchandrachi Factory and Natarang have spurred on director Anant Mahadevan to venture into making his first Marathi film Me Sindhutai Sapkal. Mahadevan happened to read an article about Sindhutai. "I read a news article which had a very catchy headline 'I have 157 sons-in-law and 90 daughters. I was curious to know this story. I started my research on Sindhutai and I found out some unusual facts about her. This woman stays at Hadapsar, near Pune. On the first day of our meeting she thought I am a typical Mumbai director who will never turn up again. However when I started visiting her again and again, she opened up well. Now I am happy that she is going to be part of this film." He confesses that he was moved by listening to her version of the story. "I told her I wanted to make a movie on her. Sindhutai was thrown out of her house with a kid. Since she had no option of earning money, she started begging on the railway station. She met with other beggar kids. Looking at their situation, she decided to keep her own kid in the orphanage and started working for these street kids. Eventually she built her own ashram. We have got the rights of her story. We are not trying to pass on any social message via this film; my main motto is to focus on how she had to fight for her survival. During her struggling days she was trapped in very bad situations and nearly faced death twice in her life. So I think it is an inspirational story and needs to be told," he explains. Why did he choose to make a film in Marathi? "It would not look authentic if we make it in any other language. Sindhutai is a Maharashtrian. It will have subtitles in English, because I am planning to screen it in the Venice Film festival first and then in IFFI (Indian Film Festival of India) at Goa. For me language is not an issue though I am directing a Marathi film for the first time. I have worked with top Marathi actors. For this film too I have got an ensemble star cast. Tejaswini Pandit who won the best actress award last year is going to play the title role while Jyoti Chandekar will play the older Sindhutai. Upendra Limaye who has won the National Award this year will play her husband. Other star cast includes Neena Kulkarni, Amruta Subhash and Charusheela Vachani." Recently at the Berlin Film Festival, he got a very positive response for the first look of the film. "We will start shooting for the film from March 10, we kept a special stall for this movie at the Berlin Film Festival and people there appreciated it a lot. They were very excited to know what the film was all about. In fact some of them even called Sindhutai the Mother Teresa of Maharashtra." The entire shooting of the film is expected to take place in Kolhapur and the film will release in September.