Gangadhar Salimath’s Ayana releases September 8

Gangadhar Salimath, who, until not long ago, was a software professional, now is a newbie director of , “Ayana” Kannada movie which explores the life of a young executive-turned-entrepreneur from the perspective of his personal and professional relationships, and the ups and downs in each of them.

Originally from Bailhongal, Gangadhar did his bachelors degree from KLE Society’s College of Engineering and Technology Belagavi. This software engineer works at Infosys. He moved to Bengaluru in 2003 to work as an aerospace engineer. He later started his own start-up that dealt with wireless antennas, but got out of it very soon and then joined software firm, which, incidentally, had a bustling filmmaking club. He made a couple of short films, primarily to gauge the response to my style of direction online. But I knew that I eventually wanted a bigger canvas on which to tell my stories.

He had the story of Ayana ready, and thought that it was a better subject to get started with. The main story line haunted me, as I had seen enough ups and downs among my friends who had turned entrepreneurs.

The title of this film relates to the journey of life of our hero, Aditya, played by Deepak Subramanya, tracing his days as a happy-go-lucky bachelor, courtship, marriage and turning entrepreneur. But there’s another element that is at the core of this story and that revolves around Aditya and his friends and how he prioritizes things in his life? Will family and career take precedence and push his friendships to the back burner?

Ayana, brings together a bunch of newcomers, including director Gangadhar Salimath, a former techie, as well as its cast, led by Deepak Subramanya and Apoorva Soma, both engineers with a passion for theatre. The film has Varun’s cinematography and the music is composed by Sriyank Sriyan. The film also features Ramesh Bhat, Nagashree, Vedashree Rao, Harsha H. S, Karthika, Gowtham, Moksha Kushal and a few others in supporting roles.