‘A person with shampooed hair can’t play village girl’
 

Rajnesh Domalpalli recently won the Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for the Best Debut Feature Film, Vanaja. For this engineer turned filmmaker, life has been hectic as his maiden venture has been and continues to travel to festivals in different parts of the world ever since it premiered in Toronto. It has been shown at festivals in various regions of the US (like New York, California, Atlanta, Arizona, Oklahoma to name a few), Stockholm (Sweden), Norway, Seoul (South Korea), Auckland and Wellington (New Zealand), Durban (South Africa), and Cairo (Egypt) besides the International Film Festival Goa, and Kerala.

Vanaja, a Telugu film, was judged the Best Narrative Feature at the IAAC Film Festival, New York, last year and had a special mention at the Hamptons International Film Festival, New York State, last year. An interesting aspect about Vanaja is the way non-actors were chosen and made to act. As a filmmaker, Rajnesh wants to tread the path of art cinema.

Radhika Rajamani gets him to reveal more. (ఇంకా…)