Vaishali Deepak in Rishika Sharma’s debut suspense thriller

Rishika Sharma, the granddaughter of the late filmmaker

GV Iyer

, is all set to prove her mettle as a director. She is currently winding up the shoot of Trunk, a suspense thriller that she was written. “The project was initially meant to be a short film for the festival circuit. But as work progressed, the team realized that the pitch was good and deserved a bigger canvas. It was then developed into a feature film, which I wrote keeping Vaishali Deepak in mind. I have seen her earlier work and always thought that she was not being given her due in films. The story of

Trunk

revolves around her character and is based on a real-life exorcism that happened in a North Karnataka Christian family,” explains Rishika.
Made on a shoe-string budget with a bunch of newcomers, much of Trunk has been canned as single shots and in sync sound. “My team has a lot of youngsters who have worked on this film out of goodwill and because we are looking at giving Kannada audiences a decent product that they can watch over two hours,” she adds.
Vaishali, who has nearly completed the film, is excited about the project. “Even though the film is made by a new team, it’s a great script and a good film for me to be a part of. I am paired with Nihal, who played villain in one story arc of Chowka. This will be his debut as protagonist,” says the actress.