Nila Madhab Panda talked about the biggest challenge he faced while making India’s first cli-fi series The Jengaburu Curse.
Padma Shri Awardee and National Award-winning director Nila Madhab Panda popularly known for films like I Am Kalam and Kadvi Hava is all set to make his OTT debut with India’s first cli-fi series The Jengaburu Curse.
The Jengaburu Curse revolves around the exploitation of Odisha’s tribal population and the illegal mining in the state for human greed. In an exclusive conversation with DNA, Nila Madhab Panda revealed the challenges faced while making the series and also shared intriguing details about the show.
He talked about his biggest challenge in making the series and said, “Jengaburu means red mountain that’s in the tribal language but it was not easy to make a story or screenplay out of it. The biggest challenge for me was writing the script, in fact, it took almost 3 years. It took a long time to explore screenplay and dialogue. I had a basic story but it was very difficult to crack the script.”
Nila Madhab Panda also revealed that though The Jengaburu Curse is a fictional story, it is based on certain truths and said, “It’s a fictional story but based on certain truths and certain legends which are pretty evident in any tribal area you go. So these beliefs have been broken today. I come from a very humble background. In Hindu culture, we pray for rivers, and trees, because it is also related to science, those are the ones that keep you alive, they are god because they are feeding you. Tomorrow if you want to disturb that, then you got to suffer. I have focused it vastly on Odisha because it is one of the states which has so much forest, and rivers. Human needs think of development but our greeds shouldn’t go to that level that you find it as a curse.”
When asked how important it is for him to bring stories from Odisha to mainstream cinema, the director and producer replied, “I feel bad also because having such a beautiful state with so much culture, and so much folklore, it has never been explored in mainstream cinema like Hindi and in other languages also. So I felt my state should be seen now, which is why I made the story based on Odisha so that Odisha can be visibly seen on national platforms.”
The Jengaburu Curse is written and directed by Nila Madhab Panda. The web series starring Nassar, Melanie Gray, Farua Abdullah, Makrand Deshpande, Sudev Nair, and Deepak Sampat among others is a cli-fi thriller set against the backdrop of ruthless exploitation in Odisha’s tribal population and illegal mining. The web series is scheduled to release on SonyLiv on August 10
