Tejja Sajja shares how Hanu Man gave him the confidence that audiences would be ready to watch Mirai in an IMDb exclusiveMirai, the action adventure fantasy thriller headlined by Teja Sajja recently released in cinemas. Directed by Karthik Gattamneni, the film is based on the life of a warrior who is tasked with the protection of nine sacred scriptures. Sajja recently spoke with IMDb in an exclusive interaction where he discussed his experience filming Mirai, and what changed for him after the positive reception of his recent movie Hanu Man.
Speaking of what the film means to global audiences, Sajja said, “Mirai is predominantly an action adventure. It has a lot of fantasy and devotion. It’s about a boy who starts off from nowhere and how he gets to know his dharma and tries to stop Ashoka’s unknown nine from destroying the world.”
Revealing how the story came to him, Sajja mentioned, “I finished shooting for Hanu Man and we were getting the post production done. At that point, Kartik sir had narrated the script to me and it was an instant yes. The film has something to cater for audiences across different age groups. The film is relevant across languages and it’s a very clean film. Action adventures are not very common in Indian cinema. So mixing that action, adventure with our histories and making a clean film, all these reasons at once, I just jumped into it.”
Speaking of how the success of Hanu Man changed his work process, Sajja shared, “Hanu Man has given me a wider audience, a bigger platform, and a little more confidence that if we do something good, there are audiences across the nation, irrespective of language, who are ready to watch the film. That confidence has been built after Hanu Man. With respect to the difference between the two films, Hanu Man is very rooted whereas Mirai spans across countries. It has a lot of action, adventure and is created on that front. The one similarity would be the connection between our histories.”
Sharing the challenges he faced while shooting, Sajja mentioned, “Challenges were that I had to train, to look like a professional in the martial arts form. Whatever I was doing, I had to be quick, fast, and equipped with the right techniques to perform, that was the challenge. We consciously made an effort to do that kind of action in this film to make it look new. The only objective of mine and even the director was to make every experience look new and thrilling and showcase edge-of-the seat visuals.” Sajja also mentioned how Indian films are at par with international ones. He said, “Indian films are not lacking anything, they are fantastic and at par with international films. With forthcoming films including that of S.S. Rajamouli sir and Mahesh Babu, we’ll stand on par with international films very soon”