Neelakanta (director)

Indian film director and screenwriter

Neelakanta

Neelakanta in 2018

Born|

G. Neelakanta Reddy[1]

Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh, India

Alma mater| Loyola College, Vijayawada
Occupation(s)| Director, Screen Writer

Neelakanta is an Indian film director and screenwriter who works predominantly in Telugu films director. He has received the National Award in the screenwriting for the feature Show.[2] He won two National Film Awards & three Nandi Awards.[3]

## Personal life

[edit]

Neelakanta is a native of Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh.[1] He studied at Loyola Public School and Loyola College in Vijayawada. Since his school days, Neelakanta has had a deep love for film direction and film making which is what drove him to Chennai after his graduation.

## Career

[edit]

Neelakanta always wanted to make films which eloquently depicted the psychological study of characters for the off-beat[4] his passion materialised with Show[5] followed by Missamma. He received two national awards, one for Best Screenplay and the other for the Best Feature Film in Telugu for Show while state Nandi Award in the screenplay department for the latter.

He then made Sada Mee Sevalo, with Shriya Saran and Venu Thottempudi in lead roles,[6] and later made a psychological thriller, Nandanavanam 120km. Both these films did not do well at the box office. Despite its commercial failure, Nanadanavanam got him huge critical acclaim.[7] These were followed by Mr.Medhavi. with Genelia and Raja in the lead roles. This film, produced by RamaRao Bodduluri, proved to be an above-average grosser. He also wrote dialogues for a Telugu remake of the Hindi hit A Wednesday!, entitled Eeenadu. In 2011, Neelakanta directed Virodhi, featuring Meka Srikanth and Kamalinee Mukherjee. Neelakanta secured the best dialogue writer award in the year 2011 for this film. In 2013 he directed Chammak Challo, which gathered bad reviews for both the director and the film.[8][9]

In 2018, he directed the Malayalam film Zam Zam starring Manjima Mohan. The film is an official remake of the Hindi film Queen.

## Filmography

[edit]

* Note: All films are in Telugu, unless otherwise noted.

Year  | Film  | Role  | Notes

|
|
|

1994  | Priyanka | Screenplay, direction  | Tamil film;
Remake of Hindi film Damini – Lightning
2002  | Show | Screenplay, direction  | Winner - two National Film Awards
2003  | Missamma | Screenplay, direction  | Winner - Four Nandi Awards
2005  | Sadaa Mee Sevalo | Screenplay, direction  |
2006  | Nandanavanam 120km | Screenplay, direction  |
2008  | Mr. Medhavi | Direction  |
2009  | Eeenadu | Dialogues  |
2011  | Virodhi | Screenplay, direction  | Screened at International Film Festival of India – 2011

Winner - Two Nandi Awards 2011
Screened at Melbourne International Film Festival-2011[10]

2013  | Chammak Challo | Direction  |
2014  | Maaya[11] | Screenplay, direction  | [12]
2023  | Circle | Direction  |
TBA | Zam Zam | Direction | Malayalam film;
Remake of Hindi film Queen

## Awards

[edit]

National Film Awards

* National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Telugu – 2002 – Show
* National Film Award for Best Screenplay – 2002 – Show

Nandi Awards

* Nandi Award for Best Screenplay Writer – Show (2001)
* Nandi Award for Best Screenplay Writer – Missamma (2003)
* Nandi Award for Best Dialogue Writer – Virodhi (2011)

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b "Interview with Neelakanta". Idle Brain.
2. ^ "Awards of Neelakanta". Cine Radham. Archived from the original on 2 March 2014.
3. ^ "నంది అవార్డు విజేతల పరంపర (1964–2008)" [A series of Nandi Award Winners (1964–2008)] (PDF) (in Telugu). Information & Public Relations of Andhra Pradesh. Retrieved 21 August 2020.
4. ^ "Directors show all the way". Idle brain.
5. ^ "Review". Fully hyderabad.
6. ^ "Sada mee sevalo is a dud". Rediff.
7. ^ "120 km away from routine flicks". cinegoer.
8. ^ "writer sleeping under tree". tupaki.
9. ^ "Nothing flashy about this". 123 telugu. 15 February 2013.
10. ^ "IFFM neglected Telugu films". sisi enterprises. Archived from the original on 21 February 2015.
11. ^ "For 'Maaya', Harshvardhan Rane follows caveman's diet". CNN-IBN. 17 January 2014. Archived from the original on 25 May 2014. Retrieved 25 May 2014.
12. ^ "Maaya is Neelakanta's new film". action cut. Archived from the original on 3 March 2014. Retrieved 3 March 2014.

## External links

[edit]

* Neelakanta at IMDb

* v
* t
* e

Filmography of Neelakanta

* Priyanka (1994)
* Show (2002)
* Missamma (2003)
* Sada Mee Sevalo (2005)
* Nandanavanam 120km (2006)
* Mr. Medhavi (2008)
* Virodhi (2011)
* Chammak Challo (2013)
* Maaya (2014)
* Zam Zam (unreleased)

* v
* t
* e

National Film Award for Best Screenplay

1967–1980|

* S. L. Puram Sadanandan (1967)
* Pandit Anand Kumar (1968)
* Puttanna Kanagal (1969)
* Satyajit Ray (1970)
* Tapan Sinha (1971)
* Gulzar (1972)
* Mrinal Sen and Ashish Burman (1973)
* Satyajit Ray (1974)
* No Award (1975)
* Vijay Tendulkar (1976)
* Satyadev Dubey, Shyam Benegal, Girish Karnad (1977)
* T. S. Ranga and T. S. Nagabharana (1978)
* Sai Paranjpye (1979)
* Mrinal Sen (1980)

1981–2000|

* K. Balachander (1981)
* Mrinal Sen (1982)
* G. V. Iyer (1983)
* Adoor Gopalakrishnan (1984)
* Bhabendra Nath Saikia (1985)
* Budhdhadeb Dasgupta (1986)
* Adoor Gopalakrishnan (1987)
* Arundhati Roy (1988)
* M. T. Vasudevan Nair (1989)
* K. S. Sethumadhavan (1990)
* M. T. Vasudevan Nair (1991)
* M. T. Vasudevan Nair (1992)
* Satyajit Ray (1993)
* M. T. Vasudevan Nair (1994)
* Saeed Akhtar Mirza and Ashok Mishra (1995)
* Agathiyan (1996)
* Rituparno Ghosh (1997)
* Ashok Mishra (1998)
* Madampu Kunjukuttan (1999)
* Bharathiraja (2000)

2001–present|

* Neelakanta (2001)
* Aparna Sen (2002)
* Goutam Ghose (2003)
* Manoj Tyagi and Nina Arora (2004)
* Prakash Jha, Manoj Tyagi and Shridhar Raghavan (2005)
* Abhijat Joshi, Rajkumar Hirani and Vidhu Vinod Chopra (2006)
* Feroz Abbas Khan (2007)
* Sachin Kundalkar (2008)

Original|

* P. F. Mathews and Harikrishna (2009)
* Vetrimaaran (2010)
* Nitesh Tiwari, Vikas Bahl, and Vijay Maurya (2011)
* Sujoy Ghosh (2012)
* P. Sheshadri (2013)
* Srijit Mukherji (2014)
* Juhi Chaturvedi and Himanshu Sharma (2015)
* Syam Pushkaran (2016)
* Sajeev Pazhoor (2017)
* Rahul Ravindran (2018)

Adapted|

* Gopal Krishan Pai and Girish Kasaravalli (2009)
* Anant Mahadevan and Sanjay Pawar (2010)
* Avinash Deshpande Nigdi (2011)
* Bhavesh Mandalia and Umesh Shukla (2012)
* Panchakshari (2013)
* Joshy Mangalath (2014)
* Vishal Bhardwaj (2015)
* Sanjay Krishnaji Patil (2016)
* Jayaraj (2017)
* Sriram Raghavan , Arijit Biswas, Yogesh Chandekar, Hemanth M. Rao and Pooja Ladha Surti (2018)

Dialogues|

* Pandiraj (2009)
* Sanjay Pawar (2010)
* Girish Kulkarni (2011)
* Anjali Menon (2012)
* Sumitra Bhave (2013)
* Vishal Bhardwaj (2014)
* Juhi Chaturvedi and Himanshu Sharma (2015)
* Tharun Bhascker (2016)
* Sambit Mohanty (2017)
* Churni Ganguly (2018)

*[TBA]: To be announced
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