Raam Reddy on Life Post 'Jugnuma', His Next Film and the Rebellion of Originality: 'I’m Trying to Change the Algorithm'

Raam Reddy is spending his days in Bengaluru, thinking, writing, and listening — mostly to music. “I really think the only medium more powerful than cinema is music,” he says. “Even cinema tends to hit emotional peaks, but not in the way music does. It’s something I want to explore in my next film.”

He isn’t ready to name what that next film will be — or even if it’s one film. “I’m developing two ideas,” he says. “One is intimate, going back to my roots, and the other is larger in scope, something that will take longer to develop. I’ve also been looking at the Dogme 95 movement, which strips filmmaking down to its bare bones. And I’m curious about making a music-centric film, not a musical where characters break into song, but a film where the music comes first, organically, from within the story.” 

It’s a typically reflective answer from a filmmaker whose work feels both carefully composed and radical. Across Thithi (2015) and Jugnuma: The Fable (2024), Reddy has built a body of work that sits outside of industry trends — meditative, precise, unhurried — as if cinema for him is less a product than a way of thinking. “My whole life, I was preparing to be a filmmaker without knowing it,” he says. “I come from that authorial school, the kind that tries to create great cinema. People like Paul Thomas Anderson were towering figures for me.”

He laughs, recalling how, a few weeks ago, he went to see a Paul Thomas Anderson film at a multiplex and accidentally walked into the show of a mainstream Indian film. “It was so loud — my wife and I got startled! We aren’t regular cinema watchers anymore, so we hadn’t realised how much the trends have shifted,” he says. “When you make a film like Jugnuma and put it out into that world, it can feel like the odd one out. But that’s also what makes it beautiful, necessary, even powerful.”

That sense of standing apart, of swimming against the current, has followed Reddy since Thithi, his National Award-winning debut made with non-professional actors in rural Karnataka. It’s also something he’s learned to embrace. “Both Thithi and Jugnuma have been disruptors in their own ways,” he says. “There’s always pressure after your first film, but you can’t chase what’s trending. You have to keep the courage up. Either you back off or you keep going until the algorithm favours you. At least find a balance where you can still feed the counterculture.” 

A still from 'Jugnuma'

For Reddy, that “counterculture” is a necessary rebellion. “Rebellions usually get squashed. They don’t tend to work,” he says. “For one to succeed, it has to grow beyond a small uprising and become a counterculture. That takes multiple films, multiple directors, and a group of people willing to be brave. It’s hard to do, but that’s the only way change happens."

In that sense, Jugnuma’s release and the response to it have been validating. “I’ve received letters from young filmmakers and writers saying that watching it reinstated their faith in what they want to do,” he says. “They tell me, ‘We don’t have to be slaves to the algorithm.’ That, for me, is the biggest achievement. When someone feels empowered to make what they believe in.”

Reddy’s way of speaking mirrors the rhythm of his films; it's reflective, meandering, alive with ideas. He isn’t dogmatic about what cinema should be, but he is exacting about what it shouldn’t: imitation. “It takes time to create something new,” he says. “Look at Murakami, he wasn’t widely known until he was 40, but he kept writing every day. It takes time to create a counterculture.” 

A still from 'Thithi'

For now, Reddy is in a period of transition. “Thithi was playful, Jugnuma was meditative,” he says. “Now I want something high-energy to let out my inner restlessness, go back to my sports and music roots, and just have fun with it.”

There’s a lightness to how he says it, though it’s clear he doesn’t mean it lightly. To make films the way he does is an act of persistence, even defiance. “I’m trying to stay true to originality while the algorithm is against it,” he says. “How do we change the algorithm to be for it? That’s the eventual goal.”

It sounds idealistic, maybe even utopian, but that’s precisely what makes Raam Reddy’s voice distinct in Indian cinema: he’s chasing something beyond commerce, beyond content: an algorithm of art itself.