It’s not often that a filmmaker remakes their own film a few years after the release of the original. But with Sarfira, which is slated for release this month, Sudha Kongara has. The Akshay Kumar-starrer is the Hindi version of her National Award-winning Tamil film Soorarai Pottru (2020).

What prompted the remake? “With so much new content being released, I feel the film’s been forgotten,” she says.

Although OTT helped the film reach audiences in north India, she feels it deserved a bigger release: “I was shocked that a Tamil film was trending in Rajasthan and Chandigarh, but a small percentage saw it overall. I strongly believe it’s a theatrical film.”

Kongara reveals Kumar was her first choice for the remake because he shares “many similarities” with Suriya, who played the lead in the original and has a cameo in the remake. “When I approached Suriya, I thought, ‘He can sell ice to an eskimo’. That’s the same quality I saw in Akshay sir. I didn’t have any doubts about either of them,” she ends.