Aryan Santhosh debut as a director with a folklore

After 15 years as an actor in the Kannada film industry, Aryan Santhosh says there came a point when performing in front of the camera was no longer enough. “I realised I had to tell a bigger story. That’s when I decided to become a director,” he says. His directorial debut, Chenkol, grew out of a long-standing fascination with the legends surrounding Kerala’s Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple — particularly the stories of hidden vaults and unexplored mysteries.

‘The curiosity about the temple stayed with me’
Interestingly, Chenkol was not always envisioned as a folklore epic. Santhosh says, “The original script was a romantic comedy about DJ Santu. But I paused and asked myself — if I’m going all out, what story should I really tell?” That question eventually led him toward mythology and folklore. “There are many echoes of a kingdom that may still lie buried beneath the ocean. That curiosity stayed with me and slowly the story’s world began to take shape,” says Santhosh, adding that references to the Mushika dynasty
during his research inspired the narrative’s fictional foundation.

“I wanted to imagine a king whose story was never spoken about,” he says. The title Chenkol refers to the royal sceptre, symbolising the authority of a righteous king. “The film is about 60% in Kannada and 40% in Malayalam. I didn’t want to dub the Malayalam portions because today’s audiences are comfortable reading subtitles to understand the context. Cinema should unite languages, not divide them,” he states.
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