Pawan Kumar Reveals Why He Decided To Cast Fahadh Faasil in Dhoomam

The release of Dhoomam on June 23 will make Pawan Kumar one of the very few directors to have helmed films in all the four South Indian film industries. Having started as a writer and director in the Kannada film industry with the romantic comedy Lifeu Ishtene (2011), he gained national recognition with the psychological drama Lucia in 2013. After directing the supernatural drama UTurn (2016), he went on to remake it in Tamil and Telugu with Samantha Ruth Prabhu. He also ventured into the digital space with Netflix’s Hindi dystopian drama Leila and the Telugu sci-fi thriller Kudi Yedamaithe (2021). With Dhoomam, which is also set to be released in multiple languages, he is all set to make his debut in Malayalam cinema.

“According to me, the common factor in all these films or series is the cinematic language,” he says when asked if he views the process of branching out into different languages as growth, “I see it as me expressing through visuals and sound. Those are the universal languages. For me as a filmmaker, the language is just one component of the entire form. When a film is dubbed, the only change is the language. The visuals or the music are not changed. It has been a cultural experience for me as I ventured into each of these industries. I was a bit vary when I made the Tamil version of UTurn since that was the first time I was going outside of Kannada cinema. However, I had a few associates from Kannada as well as a few from Tamil. This made me the space feel less alien.”

Despite having a successful career, Pawan Kumar has mentioned in several interviews before that he had a tough time finding producers for his films in the Kannada industry. After multiple rejections, he resorted to crowdfunding for his breakthrough film Lucia, a process that worked in his favour. He tried to do it again, unfortunately without success, with a script called C10H14N2, which eventually shaped into Dhoomam. While Dhoomam is produced by Hombale Films, a production house based out of Karnataka, it is primarily a Malayalam film.

“Cinema is a very business-oriented and a very expensive art form,” he says while opening up about the decision to make Dhoomam in a non-native language, “If there is no confidence in recovering the cost and making a profit, then it does not make sense to invest in it. Making a film with this concept with a bankable Kannada star does not make sense to the fanbase that they cater to. If I make it with a newcomer, then I will receive a lesser budget and hence, I will have to compromise on the vision. So, this script was stuck in this loop for a long time. Once I realised this peril, I started looking at other industries which had a bigger market and started pitching it. Otherwise, my primary choice would be to make it in the language that is native and comfortable to me.” 

Addressing a major question that the filmmaker was being asked ever since the project's announcement, he says, “We were asked so many questions like, despite both the production house and I being native Kanandigas, why did we choose to make this in Malayalam. Then the question arises, who do we make it with? Considering the production cost involved while also ensuring that the artistic vision remains uncompromised, we do not have a star in Kannada we can make this with. If you take Fahadh Faasil, he does not have any baggage of a star. His filmography has been very diverse and he does not have to cater to any kind of genre, which is what he likes. The casting was a business decision; we knew that we could recover the cost. Hence, unfortunately, we had to move towards Malayalam. We could not think of any star in Kannada that could give us that confidence. It is easy to say encourage new talent, but the audience themselves won’t make it to the theatres.”

With Dhoomam, Pawan Kumar will be collaborating with actor Fahadh Faasil for the first time. Being an actor himself, Pawan mentions that he expected the Varathan actor to have an intense process to get into character and perform, but was pleasantly surprised. “He was just having fun and when I told him that the shot's ready, he instantly became the character. I gave a lot of instructions initially, and he said that he had only 8 expressions. I was watching the film last night, and there is one particular scene where a lot is happening and he did such an amazing job. But I know what he was doing ten minutes before the scene was shot; he was just sitting and talking to my daughter. I was amazed by how convincing the performance was. It was an entirely different approach.”