‘Good trend, local is more global now’

Actors Ayushmann Khurrana and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who have teamed up for the first time on their upcoming movie, ‘Thamma’, believe it’s the right time to showcase Indian folk stories to the world. The two actors said they grew up with the stories of Vikram and Betaal and exploring something similar in the movie felt exciting.

‘Thamma’ follows Khurrana’s Alok, a Delhi-based journalist, who accidentally stumbles upon a different world of vampires after meeting the mysterious Tadaka, played by Rashmika Mandanna and a terrifying vampire played by Siddiqui.

“This is a very good trend that has come to our country, wherein we are going within our culture, language, etc. We are seeing our culture more. Films are being made around it, we are getting more ‘desi’ and people are able to relate more to it. People want to know about India and because of this, the more local we go, the closer we get to the culture and the more global acceptance we get as they also get intrigued about stories coming from India. So, I think that’s a very welcome change,” Khurrana told PTI in an interview.

The actor said there was a time when filmmakers aspired to shoot in foreign locations, but that's not the case anymore. “The biggest aspiration is how close we are to our country and our culture and that’s beautiful for Indian cinema. ‘Thamma’ is also a chapter of that, which is taking the ‘Maddock’ horror comedy universe forward,” he said.

Siddiqui said stories from folk tradition help promote Indian culture worldwide. “The more local it is, the more global it is. There are so many thousands of stories, like even if we make two to four films a year, we will still have more stories to be told. We ourselves have heard some stories from our grandparents, so there are so many stories waiting to be told,” the actor said.

‘Thamma’ is the latest film in the horror-comedy universe, which began with 2018’s ‘Stree’, starring Rajkummar Rao and Shraddha Kapoor. Its success spawned titles such as ‘Roohi’, ‘Bhediya’ and ‘Munjya’. The films in this franchise are produced by Dinesh Vijan’s ‘Maddock Films’.

Also starring Paresh Rawal and Faisal Malik of ‘Panchayat’ fame, ‘Thamma’ arrived in theatres on October 21.