‘Kantara Chapter 1’: Rishab Shetty opens up on the emotional impact of co-star Rakesh Poojary’s demise; says the 'loss was huge'

Rishab Shetty’s popular Kannada movie ‘Kantara Chapter 1’ will release on October 2. The film was shot over 250 days at real places, and Rishab spent five years working on both parts of the movie. Sadly, during the shooting of the second part, three actors from the film passed away, which led to some negative murmurs about Shetty's direction. In a recent interview, Rishab talked about losing these actors and remembered the late Rakesh Poojary, saying he was like a brother to him.

Rishabh Shetty clarifies the losses and their impact
Speaking to the Indian Express about the deaths, he said it was definitely a huge loss, but it could not be connected to the film. He emphasized that it was about human life. Shetty said,“Definitely it’s a huge loss, but we cannot connect it to the film. It’s about human life, out of the three people we lost, two were junior artists, one of them had not even reached our set, he was on the way when he had some health issues, and later we got to know he had a heart attack. We sent the manager there to take him to the hospital and get the post-mortem and other formalities sorted.”


Rishab Shetty delves into the second accident
Shetty explained that the second death did not happen on the set. Shetty added, "There was another man from Kerala, I remember his face, it was a night shoot, and his accident didn’t happen on our set. We were rehearsing in another town, there was a temple, and a river was close by. There was a board that said it was an accident-prone area, but youngsters want to explore; he went there, and the accident happened. He had shot with me multiple times."

Remembering the late Rakesh Poojary