Anjali Patil’s Tamil-language film Selvi has left the Busan International Film Festival with two awards and sold-out screenings, setting up a long festival run before a planned India release early next year.
Directed by debutant filmmaker Sailesh Rathnakumar, Selvi is a story about home care nurses. Patil, a National Award-winning actor, produced the film and plays the lead.
A festival run built around craft
At Busan, every screening sold out. Patil said audiences came up with their tickets for autographs and photographs after Q&As that were translated into Korean. “It was quite overwhelming,” she told The Times of India.
Next is the Brazilian premiere at the São Paulo International Film Festival, in the festival’s 50th year, followed by other festivals in Europe and North America. The team is targeting a theatrical release in India at the beginning of next year.
The route matters beyond prestige: festival exposure is being used as a discovery engine before the film faces the harder question of theatrical returns at home.
Why good films can still pull audiences
Patil pushed back on the popular assumption that audiences have become interested only in pure entertainment. She pointed to Korean films that move from artistic merit to box-office success, and to Tamil titles such as Tourist Family, Thaai Kizhavi and Dragon as recent examples of different scales working.
“Audiences are intelligent enough to recognise a good film,” she said. “When they see one, they will go to theatres and watch it.”
She has her own evidence. By her estimate, she has acted in 40 or 50 Hindi, English and Marathi films combined, and one Tamil film — Kaala — but Tamil audiences continue to remember her for Puyal.
Building Selvi twice over
Patil asked to play the lead as soon as she read the synopsis, then worked as producer to support the director’s vision while protecting the complexity of Selvi and the other female characters. Since Selvi is a healthcare professional, nurses on set taught her the exact movements for medical procedures.
She also dubbed her own Tamil, a process she called difficult enough that she considered handing it to someone else. Sound designer Anand Krishnamurthy helped her repeat words more than 100, 200 or even 300 times; later, dubbing director Keerthika helped her re-record the whole film to move closer to a native speaker.
What the Selvi campaign suggests for small, culturally rooted films:
- Let festival credibility and sold-out screenings build word of mouth before a domestic release.
- Treat language and dubbing as part of the performance, not a post-production chore.
- Follow the substance of your slate across industries, not just the scale.
Patil said an audience member at Busan asked how a male writer-director had managed to understand the female characters; her answer, in effect, is that the writing was already precise and her job was to keep it that way.
The team also met Park Chan-wook at Busan and hopes he will watch the film — a small moment that can shape a festival title’s reputation.
Source: The Times of India
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