Nitesh Tiwari said his upcoming “Ramayana,” described as India’s most expensive film, is being built to deliver a level of visual scale and craftsmanship that can stand alongside the world’s top VFX productions, telling a WAVES Film Bazaar audience that the epic demands “something visually so stunning that it becomes a benchmark for the whole world.”
Speaking about a five-year process of virtual production, motion capture and world-building with Prime Focus, Tiwari detailed the ambition and pressure behind reimagining the mythological saga while fellow filmmakers Prasanth Varma and Ashwin Kumar stressed that technology must serve story, not drive it.
The directors, in the forefront of India’s visual-effects boom, joined moderator Rajiv Chilaka of Green Gold Animation to discuss how technology is reshaping Indian cinema. They drew on their specific experiences with films in a conversation that explored India’s expanding creative capabilities, cutting-edge technologies, and the growing demand for high-quality VFX across films, streaming, and animation.
Nitesh Tiwari spoke on the ambition of “Ramayana,” and about the scale and responsibility of imagining the epic tale into a VFX film. “Ramayana” deserves to be told in the grandeur it deserves… something visually so stunning that it becomes a benchmark for the whole world,” he said. Working with one of the world’s leading VFX studios (Prime Focus) has been “scary, liberating, and mind-numbing all at the same time,” he said.
He described a five-year journey of learning and adapting to virtual production, motion capture, and world-building. “It took me two years to come to terms with the fact that I was making such a big film… Today I’m very comfortable, but it wasn’t easy, and we are still one year away from the release of the first part,” he said.
Prasanth Varma, whose Telugu-language superhero film “HanuMan” became a pan-India hit, emphasised that technology alone cannot drive success. “Films work because of stories. All other crafts, including VFX, help in telling that story in a grand way.”
Self-taught in VFX, editing, and cinematography, Varma, who is working on “Jai Hanuman” revealed his practical approach. “Either you give the artist a lot of time or you have a lot of money… We didn’t have money, but we had time.”
Ashwin Kumar spoke about his breakout animated hit “Mahavatar Narsimha” and about building films from sheer determination. As he moves to his next project, “Mahavatar Parshuram,” the second in the “Mahavatar” animated cinematic universe, Kumar said AI is a useful catalyst to get to a final outcome faster. Kumar believes the next five years will redefine filmmaking: “We are at the cusp and in five years, there will probably be an AI film that will make you cry.”
On the topic of animated films, Tiwari said it was on his “bucket list to do an animation film based on Indian locations, Indian characters and story but for the world.”
The discussion emphasised how innovation, talent, and ambition are propelling India forward in visual effects and redefining cinematic possibilities adding that VFX and technology cannot be the starting point for the idea, but can be enablers of the idea.
WAVES Film Bazaar is the market component of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Goa.