Why caste is hardly discussed in Kannada cinema: Bheemrao P on his acclaimed social drama ‘Hebbuli Cut’

Mainstream Kannada cinema has shied away from the subject of caste. For filmmaker Bheemrao P, it was vital to make sure that his debut enterprise didn’t get nipped in the bud. While selling his film, Hebbuli Cut, he referred to as the movie a young story of a boy’s dream to get a flowery coiffure. The movie is greater than that, however Bheemrao wished to generate buzz round his movie, earlier than the rest.

“The moment you mention Ambedkarism, a section of people will distance themselves from your movie. Hence, I stressed the fact that my movie was a ‘commercially engaging social drama’,” he tells The Hindu.

Released in theatres on July 04, 2025, Hebbuli Cut made noise amongst a small crowd, largely comprising critics and followers of area of interest content material. The movie has seen elevated acceptance since its latest launch on the OTT platform Sun Nxt. “I see people writing long posts on social media about my film. It is getting discussed in multiple forums,” says the director.

Hebbuli Cut, set in Chandrabanda Village close to the North Karnataka-Telangana border, tells the story of the school-going Vinay (Mounesh Nataranga), who is unruffled by the cruel realities of his environment. The movie’s battle revolves round Vinay’s want to get a coiffure much like Superstar Sudeep from the 2017 motion thriller Hebbuli. However, his dream is crushed by social bias.

Bheemrao was impressed by Dr Rajkumar’s coiffure in the 1979 motion drama Nanobba Kalla. The movie turned the place to begin of Hebbuli Cut, however he wanted a latest phenomenon to draw the mainstream viewers. That’s how Sudeep’s coiffure in Hebbuli turned an integral a part of the script. In 2017, the coiffure was a craze amongst college students. So a lot so {that a} disgruntled headmaster from Bagalkot wrote a letter to a salon requesting them to keep away from styling college students’ hair in that trend.

ALSO READ: School headmaster in Karnataka requests salon proprietor to refuse Hebbuli coiffure to college students

Back then, maybe not many imagined a state of affairs the place a boy can be denied the stylish coiffure due to the household he belonged to. “Even today, people aren’t comfortable about speaking about inequality”, laments Bheemrao. “Many people, including those from my circles, liked Hebbuli Cut. But they weren’t ready to accept the presence of unfair prejudice existing in society,” he says.

“My film is based on a real incident. Maybe, those living in metropolitan cities might not be aware of such injustice faced by people from lower castes,” he says, including {that a} latest incident in Gujarat got here as a well timed validation for his story.

It was extensively reported that a long time of prejudice ended when Kriti Chauhan turned the primary Dalit to stroll right into a barber’s store in Alawada village in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district. For generations, round 300-odd Dalits travelled to different locations for grooming as they had been denied providers by native barbers in their village.

A nonetheless from ‘Hebbuli Cut’.
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Special Arrangement

Bheemrao is nonetheless discovering his voice as a filmmaker. He is drawn in the direction of films that tackle societal points. For over a decade, filmmakers resembling Pa. Ranjit and Mari Selvaraj have spurred a motion in Tamil cinema with films that challenged caste-based discrimination. “Pa Ranjit is very aggressive in how he conveys his displeasure towards society. Mari Selvaraj tackles serious topics in an engaging fashion. I prefer Mari’s films over Ranjith’s,” he causes

He is additionally an admirer of Marathi filmmaker Nagaraj Manjule. “His films don’t try hard to portray inequality, yet they move you. That tells his calibre. I loved his Fandry (2014). I could relate to the Dalit teenager’s fight against societal expectations. The final scene, in which he throws a stone at the camera, thereby breaking the fourth wall, is the director’s revolt against the biased world. It had a huge impact on me,” he explains.

Bheemrao prefers churning out partaking tales based mostly on vital topics. “In the past, few Kannada films on caste used melodrama to drive home the message. This kind of approach doesn’t work with the audience.”

Bheemrao’s method to mix leisure with a message is evident in the beautifully-shot track, Haadu Hagalalle, in Hebbuli Cut. “Thesong reveals the feelings of the boy, who has fallen in love with an upper caste girl. It’s my way of vouching for secularism as he dreams of living happily with the girl and her family,” he says, including that he is presently writing one other “commercial” movie.