Panaji, Nov 26 (UNI) Talented duo of siblings, filmmaker Sriram Raghavan and writer Shridhar Raghavan enthralled the audience at 49th International Festival of India (IFFI) with anecdotes from their years growing up together in Pune and their journey through the film industry.

Speaking about how they fell in love with cinema, Sriram said, “As a kid I loved movies, that’s the only escape I had”, to which Shridhar added that, “We grew up in Pune next to the Apollo and Alankar Cinema halls where we would watch all kinds of films from the past and present, Hindi and Hollywood. One time I bunked school for six months and just watched films. Much like how kids do today using torrents.”

On being asked why it took him 17 long years to make his first feature film after passing out of FTII, Sriram said, “Hindi cinema in the 90’s wasn’t the kind of films I wanted to make. Also I took time finding my voice. My critical faculty was much better than my writing ability and hence I didn’t like anything I wrote.”

A lot of discussion revolved around his latest thriller, Andhadhun, a film that’s still running to packed houses.

Asked about the ending Sriram was cryptic as always. He asked the audience to telling him what they felt. Shridhar felt that what one thought of the ending revealed a lot about how they looked at the world and human nature. The primarily young student filmmaker community in the audience asked the duo multiple questions on their writing and filmmaking process, which the siblings answered in detail.

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