KOCHI: It all started with an off-road truck mud race. Ten years ago in Calicut, Pragabhal witnessed a race along with his friends for the first time. It got etched in the young director’s mind.
While thinking of making his debut directorial venture, the motorsport racing events enthusiast didn’t have to search hard for a subject. The young director marked his debut with his multilingual film Muddy, which is the first-ever movie based on 4x4 mud racing. The film which falls in the action-thriller genre was released a week ago and is rich with never-seen locations and hilly terrains across the country, including the borders of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
Though hailing from an architectural business family in Thrissur, Pragabhal’s dreams were centred around movies. It took him five years to research and craft the film based on mud race. Written and directed by himself, Pragabhal has cast his elder brothers Yuvan Krishna and Ridhaan Krishna in the lead roles.
“I was adamant to make my first film unique. Since I have witnessed the rage, action and adventure of mud racing, I decided to make it my subject. The shooting started in 2019 after much research. I wanted to keep the film realistic, so I avoided dupes and made the actors train professionally for two years. Since a few mainstream actors I reached out to weren’t available for the lead roles, my brothers came to my rescue. They were mere businessmen with no acting background,” he says.
The director himself did the choreography for the mud race with professional mud race players to add to the beauty of the frames captured by cinematographer KG Ratheesh. According to him, the high-risk and challenging factor while filming Muddy was finding the locations.
“I took DOP Ratheesh and the professional mud racers to the locations I scouted to know how comfortable they are. They needed to understand the hilly terrains I chose. As the locations were in deep forests, permission from forest officials to shoot was also taken. Choreographing the racing scenes was my next challenge. As usual, the race would extend for 24 hours. We used 15 cameras to get the shots from every angle. Going for retakes was not possible so we prepared ahead,” he adds.
KGF-fame Ravi Basrur composed the music for the film. Muddy makes his entry into the Malayalam industry. Ratsasan-fame San Lokesh handled the editing of the film. Muddy was produced by Prema Krishnadas under the banner PK 7.
“It took two years to complete the sound design and Ravi Basrur’s infinite knowledge and punchy music effects enriched the beauty of the racing scenes,” says the director. I M Vijayan, Renji Panicker, Anusha Suresh and Amitha Sivadas Nair performed the main roles in the thriller.
The film made in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, Malayalam and English was a novel experience for businessman turned actor, Yuvan Krishna who played the role of Muthu. The actor went through a body transformation for his role. “Muthu is a rough guy who earns his livelihood by cutting woods from the forest. I went through two years of practice learning to do the mud race driving. The great challenge was to manage and drive the jeep carrying 3-ton of wood. The adventure and fight scenes were shot without any dupes,” he says.
Yuvan wishes to continue his new passion for acting. “For me, it was a learning journey. I want to do more films with unique roles like Muthu,” the young actor says.