Telling the untold: Srividya Basawa’s docu-thriller ‘Hathya’ breaks new ground in Telugu cinema

It was definitely intentional. When we began shooting, we didn’t have any agenda tied to the elections—no plan to release it before or after. But as we progressed and neared completion, we realized the Andhra Pradesh elections were approaching. According to Censor Board guidelines, once the election mandate is released, they won’t screen any films that could even remotely connect to political themes.

So we decided to push hard and complete the shoot before the mandate came out. This wasn’t new to me—my debut film Madha was shot in just 17 days, and that was a two-and-a-half-hour film. Hathya runs around the same length, but it’s mounted on a much bigger scale, so we took 22–24 days to wrap it.

Yes, but nothing unmanageable. In fact, our first cut ran over three and a half hours—we had to trim almost an hour. But honestly, we didn’t face too many issues because of how much prep we did beforehand. My team and I invested a lot of time in groundwork—workshops, rehearsals, and planning every little detail.

While most big-budget films manage to shoot 2–4 minutes of usable footage per day, we were clocking 12 minutes daily. We planned our targets meticulously—sometimes aimed for 8 scenes a day and ended up shooting 10 or 12. That level of efficiency really helped us stay on track.

Absolutely. Most of us started together on my first film—my DOP, technicians, many were debutants. For many, this was just their second project. Still, we managed to maintain solid production values.

Another big reason for finishing quickly was cost-cutting. Equipment and locations are rented on a 24-hour basis, while crew payments are per call sheet (6 am to 6 pm). So if we overshoot, it becomes a second call sheet, doubling costs. We made sure to maximize each day—often pushing to 1.5 call sheets a day—to save on rental and production costs.

Not at all. One of my biggest inspirations for this story was Meghna Gulzar’s Talvar. I’ve watched it countless times—its layered storytelling, realism, the docu-feature tone… I loved that. When I came across the Vivekananda Reddy murder case, I was stunned by how real and complex it was. The events that unfolded post-murder had the same gritty, layered feel.

I didn’t want to sensationalise it. I wanted to tell it in a raw, naturalistic space. We visited Kadapa, studied the geography, and recreated the locality visually. The story had everything I needed to treat it as a docu-feature—a format rarely explored in Telugu cinema.

It was a live TV interview. One of the accused—who also confessed to the crime and later turned approver—was on camera explaining how he planned and executed the murder. He was shockingly calm, laying out the whole process. That instantly caught my attention. I dove deep into the case, and the deeper I went, the more I realised—it was more twisted than fiction.

Even if I tried to write something like this from scratch, I couldn’t have come up with these many twists and turns. And since thrillers are my favourite genre—it felt like the perfect story to tell. My debut was a psychological thriller. Hathya is an investigative one. Next, I’m working on a survival thriller. I want to explore every sub-genre in the thriller space.

I decided to mount it independently. One of my friends, Prashant Reddy, took a huge leap of faith—he handled a major chunk of the investment and also worked as the art director. The rest was crowd-funded from 20–30 of my close friends. It was a true collaborative effort.

Oh, much deeper. I couldn’t rely just on media articles. I read every single statement related to the case, met multiple police officers who were part of the investigation, and worked closely with senior investigative journalists. I can’t reveal all the sources for safety reasons, but I spent 14 months researching the case. After that, it took another six months to raise funds. Though the shoot and edit happened quickly, the Censor process delayed us for another 10 months.

It really was. We applied for certification months before the election mandate, but they kept us on hold. Even after the elections, they initially refused to certify it. I had to personally go to Mumbai, write multiple letters to the board, and request a revision committee screening. After that, they still had a long list of corrections—edits, dubs, disclaimers.

The whole process drained our funds. The money I had saved for release and promotions was instead spent just running the office and paying salaries for those 10 months.

It had a theatrical release on January 24. But due to budget constraints, we couldn’t promote it heavily. We sent it to Amazon Prime even before the Censor corrections, hoping they’d take it without a theatrical release. But they required Censor clearance for legal safety, given the story’s controversial nature.

Eventually, it dropped on Prime on March 12. Despite everything, Hathya performed really well—it stayed in Amazon Prime’s Top 10 for weeks. At one point, we were #2, right behind Sky Force, which was an Amazon Original. We stayed in the top 5 for nearly a month.

After Madha, which won 26 international awards, I still struggled to get a distributor because the film had no known faces. That experience made me realise the importance of casting familiar actors.

For Hathya, I initially brought in a few established names. But three days into the shoot, I had to let them go. They came in late, weren’t prepared, demanded luxury accommodations and multiple assistants—and were just not creatively involved. We couldn’t even get 30 seconds of usable footage per day.

So I stopped the shoot, recalibrated, and brought in actors like Dhanya Balakrishna, Pooja Ramachandran, and Ravi Verma. They were passionate, punctual, and prepared. They were okay with 18-hour shifts, no complaints, no demands. It was peaceful. But again, distributors hesitated because there were no ‘marketable’ faces.

Still, we recovered almost half of our investment from OTT revenue.

Absolutely. After my debut, I signed two projects with big production houses. But after 13 drafts and way too many voices in the room, I realized the story was no longer mine. I walked away. That’s how Hathya was born. Creative freedom means everything to me.

I’m working on a documentary, and one of the biggest OTT platforms really liked it. But again, they wanted me to partner with a bigger production house or bring in an established showrunner—just because I’m new and my production house isn’t well known. But I’ve already produced, shot, and edited it myself. Only post-production is pending. So why give away credit when no one else contributed?

Not initially. In 2010, I was passionate about dogs and pitched a show idea about them to a TV channel. They liked it, gave me a camera, and I made a demo episode. That led to a full-season deal after the third episode got the channel’s highest TRP. I was the anchor, scriptwriter, and handled edits too.

From there, I got into ad films—writing 30-second stories, directing shoots. That’s when I discovered my love for storytelling. And here I am now.