Much before the movie bug bit him and he assisted directors Ram Gopal Varma, Sudheer Varma and others in Telugu cinema, Clax (we shall come to the story behind this name in a bit), witnessed the testing of the Agni missile from the Wheeler Island (now renamed after APJ Abdul Kalam) off the coast of Odisha. He was then a part of a civilian organisation associated with the DRDO. “We could literally feel the island shaking,” he recalls, and adds, “Sorry, I do not remember the exact year of the testing”. Bedurulanka 2012, his first film as a writer and director that stars Kartikeya Gummakonda and Neha Shetty, which will release in theatres on August 25, is a fictitious story of people on an island who fear that the world is coming to an end.
Clax, whose real name is Uddaraju Venkata Krishna Panduranga Raju, says the experience of watching the missile testing, the doomsday prediction that led to Hollywood films such as the science fiction disaster film 2012, and a dialogue in Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai about people’s behaviour when there is no fear or burden of future, served as inspirations when he began writing Bedurulanka 2012. The island in this film is Yedurulanka. Since its people live in fear, he titled it Bedurulanka. A social satire and dramedy took shape. Fake godmen begin exploiting the anxious people filled with fear and some people begin to act strangely, with no tomorrow to live up to.
