Hostel Hudugaru Bekagiddare: It all feels surreal, say Nithin Krishnamurthy, Arvind Kashyap

Nithin Krishnamurthy’s debut film Hostel Hudugaru Bekagiddare has proved to be the much-needed energy boost to the Kannada film industry in 2023 after a lacklustre first half, lit up by Shashank Soghal’s Daredevil Musthafa. The audiences, mostly youth, are back in the theatres and there’s laughter all around, partially marred by the case filed by actress-politician Ramya against “unauthorised use of her video clips”. A commercial court in Bengaluru later allowed the release of the film.

The film stars Prajwal BP, Manjunatha Nayaka, Rakesh Rajkumar, Srivatsa, and Tejas Jayanna Urs, besides Nithin himself, with cameos by Rishab Shetty, Pawan Kumar, and Diganth. The story takes place during the course of a night in a boy’s hostel of an engineering college. It’s difficult to classify the film that’s packed with humour, some satire, a commentary on life, and an ode to hostel life — all at the same time. The team has been doing a tour of theatres, and getting used to the idea of being garlanded and having their names shouted out after each screening.

Helping Nithin’s vision come alive is cinematographer Arvind Kashyap, who scored big last year with 777 Charlie and Kantara. The framing and camera work is exquisite, with a certain urgency in movement. Arvind is also the reason Rakshit Shetty — actor, writer, director and producer — came on board. He discussed the film while shooting 777 Charlie, in which Rakshit acted, showed him rushes, and Rakshit asked to see the film once it was complete. “I loved the way they shot the film. It seemed very novel in the Indian context. I laughed so much while watching this. I had to back it,” says Rakshit.

In a conversation with The Federal, Nithin and Arvind speak about how they approached the film, the team camaraderie and how delectable the success is. For Nithin, whose cinema-loving mother took him to watch many movies, and who clapped and whistled in the movies, life came full circle when he was the object of all that affection from the audience. “It all feels surreal,” he says.

Edited excerpts:

Nithin, your film has got many people wanting to go back to hostel life and tempted others to try living in a hostel at least once. 

So, I’m told (laughs). I was a hosteler myself at Jain Engineering College in Bangalore though my home was in the city. Much of the hostel life in the film is what we experienced too, but I did not try to kill anyone. The first 15 minutes is based on the hostels we saw in Student of The Year (2012) and American Pie (1999) — full of glamour and hygiene and artistic decor. Hostels are not like that, no? Especially boys’ hostels. They are not clean, there’s always a ruckus, and the main villain is the warden.

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Arvind, your work is being spoken about a lot because the visuals are unlike anything we have seen. How did you translate the writing into visuals?

From the beginning, we knew it had to be shot this way. It is an amateur filmmaker shooting this, and so I did a lot of research before picking the Canon C 300 Mark II. The shooting process was very elaborate. We would have multiple rehearsals before going for the shoot. Yes, there was chaos on screen as per the script, but we had to control it while working to bring that effect on screen. And that took precise planning.

Nithin, after you worked with Pawan in Lucia (2013), you shot ad films and promos. Do you think this deeply youthful film needed the maturity of experience to pull off?

I quite agree, yes. I needed that distance from hostel life to do this. This effect would have been missing if I’d written it when younger. Also, the pop culture references meant I needed some experience in writing before attempting this.

The film needed two things — a big, dedicated, sincere team and the innocence of a first-time filmmaker. But it had to be tempered by maturity. We had our constraints, but it helped that we produced it ourselves. Everyone had a conviction about the project.

This film, with its chaos and quirky humour, must not have been easy to write. What was the process like?

Nithin: I began writing this during lockdown. We meant to do a big-budget film and realised the time was not right. We wrote a very small film that eventually grew bigger. It took me three weeks to write the story and the basic scenes and structures, and six weeks for the first draft. Most of the final writing was done during rehearsals. I absorbed influences from the performers and incorporated that into the script. The writing eventually was a blend of the role and the performer. And so while we had a bound script, we did have a lot of impromptu dialogues… we were not bound to what we had already decided on.

I did not write the climax until the shoot, because I wanted to see how it shaped up. I felt the film would write its own climax. I watched the film and then wrote the climax; it was an organic process. We never went ahead unless we were completely happy with the output. We shot an entire song five times. I once shot a scene for six days.

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Nithin, at any stage, did you have a doubt if the film would click?

Nithin: I knew we were treading a thin line and that this was experimental. There was this fear, yes. But I had a gut feeling it was working out well and would appeal to the audience. I was very confident about the script. This is the kind of film I would love to watch. It had humour and sarcasm, and people actually got the details. The popularity of the promos gave us hope.

Arvind, by now you’re a known name with Kantara and 777 Charlie. What did you have to unlearn for this film? (He was working on 777 Charlie and Hostel… simultaneously)

Arvind: This was completely new for all of us, and we had to unlearn a lot of things before this film. Everyone expects the frames to be beautiful. Here, we had to do the exact opposite. It had to be chaotic, it had to convey a certain urgency, constant movement. I had to stop myself from doing so many things I would have normally done as a cinematographer.

Nithin: We experimented with the sound design, the writing. We knew this would be something new for the audience. But the laughter and fun during the shoot gave us the confidence that if we were enjoying the process, the audience would enjoy the end result too.

What was the shooting spot like, Nithin and Arvind?

We shot in the Mangalore University’s Suvarna hostel for 85 days during the lockdown. The entire movie was shot at night. We never saw daylight. We would go to sleep during the day, and wake up in the evening. We became hostel boys. There were about 300-400 artistes working, sometimes in the rain, sometimes in the sun, and we all stayed in the hostel.

This was a fun set, with almost everyone in the same age group, but for the cameo of Rishab Shetty and Pawan Kumar, it was us boys. There was no producer breathing down our necks, and it was just us, channelling our inner discipline.

The film might be about chaos, but the shoot was not. The artistes remained stress-free because we had a coordination team to take care of it.

Has the blockbuster success caught you by surprise?

Nithin: We expected a run in multiplexes, but the way people have appreciated it has left us very surprised. We have been getting calls from single-screen owners that our film has revived their business. It just showed us yet again that you can be a first-time filmmaker, making a film that does not follow established patterns, but if your content is good, it will find takers.

You’ve said that women too have liked this predominantly male movie. But they exist only on the margins of your film, right?

Nithin: The plot revolves around the boys’ hostel. If I’d set this in a village or in college, girls and women would have been a part of it, for sure. That was the only restriction in the script. As for women, there’s also the subtle messaging through the character of the editor that women are objectified for no reason. (Ramya is used by him as a filler when he does not know what else to do — there’s also a hat tip to American Beauty).

What would you change about the movie now, a week after its release?

Nithin: We have received some complaints about the sound levels not being high enough. We are resolving that. That apart, every time I watch it, I spot mistakes, knowing I can’t change it now. I discuss how we could have done something better, differently. I think I am quite nonchalant as a filmmaker. But I am not a person who is happy with what I do.

Your mother is a film buff. Has she seen the film, Nithin?

Oh! she has watched it five times, in fact. But I’m yet to ask her what she feels about it. It’s been a childhood dream come true to see the audience hooting and shouting when jokes land.

It was a bit of a dare to keep the first 15 minutes generic and then turn things around. 

Nithin: That was a conscious decision. That is the trope we are used to seeing and I wanted to subvert that. That’s also why there were very few jokes in the first 15 minutes. We knew the audience would enter the world we wanted them to after the 20th minute.

The pre-release stress with the court case was a dampener. Would you do anything differently?

Nithin: We did not need this issue, for sure. We were too small to handle something of this magnitude. Luckily, we got the industry’s support. When you create art, you can’t be very calculative, you can’t be too careful. But our production team was careful and took care of the legalities and documentation. That is why we were able to release it on time. I am a huge fan of Ramya, even now. That’s why I wanted her in the film. We did not know things would pan out this way. I don’t have an answer to the ‘why’ of this issue.