Sandeep P.S. and Sumanth Bhat are storytellers with conviction and clarity.
As creators of Ekam , the seven-episode web series co-produced by Rakshit Shetty’s Paramvah Studios, the duo leaves you in little doubt about what to expect as you dive into their maiden work. In the animated Munnudi (Prologue) to the series, the showrunners reinforce their commitment to stories; the ones you may have heard, the ones you could never imagine, the ones lived and bequeathed. So different, yet so similar.
So many emotions and circumstances, all distilled down to the singular human experience. It is this universality of experience that propels the series, with the Karavali or coastal Karnataka region providing a lush backdrop of diverse communities and languages to set the myriad characters in. The series begins with a simple, almost straight-forward rom-com and grows in complexity, culminating with a metaphysical exploration of what it means to be a writer.
In Haaraata (Flight), directed by Sankar Gangadharan and Vivek Vinod, a meet-cute between Manjula and Thomas must grapple with religious differences and patriarchy even before love can blossom. Shoonya (Void), shot in the Tulu language, traces the descent of Guruva (a stellar Basuma Kodagu) from a master hunter to a human scarecrow. His transformation from a sought-after tribal huntsman of exceptional prowess — who can spot wild boars in the distance using just his sharp senses — to a crazy, old nobody weighed down by a mighty ri.