STEP BY STEP

Vishakhapatnam girl Praneeta Patnaik got a break in the Telugu film industry by chance, but now she’s diligently working her way upward

- Krishna Prasad

Making a career out of act-ing was unthinkable for Praneeta Patnaik while she was a management student doing her MBA in her hometown Vishakhapatnam. But she was noticed by Telugu film director Venkatesh Maha, who was scouting the coastal city’s dance academies for an “authentic Telugu-speaking girl with good dancing skills” for his upcoming film C/o Kancharapalem. Praneeta, who had been learning Kuchipudi since the age of four, was in class the day he dropped in. The next day, she auditioned and was finalised for the role of Bhargavi.

The film, shot over 62 days in Kancharapalem and Bheemili suburbs of Visakhapatnam, went on to become a superhit and changed Praneeta’s life. It premiered at the New York Indian Film Festival in May 2018, and its storyline of four small-town couples cutting across age, religion, caste and class barriers touched the hearts of critics and audiences. The Times of India gave it a high rating for its “sincere, uncinematic storytelling (that) gives power to those unheard regional voices and does its part in undoing the stereotypical portrayal of community-specific stories in Telugu cinema.”