Ektaa R Kapoor didn't hold back at the trailer launch of The Vvaan on Tuesday evening. Speaking at a Mumbai multiplex alongside Sidharth Malhotra, Tamannaah Bhatia, TVF's Arunabh Kumar and the rest of the cast, she took a swing at what she called an entire generation of creators who've stopped listening to the country they're making films for.

"Humne desh se judna bandh kar diya. Hum apne aap ko usse upar samajhte hain," she said, adding that filmmakers who see themselves as above the audience will eventually get knocked down by it. It's a pointed line, and coming from the producer behind some of Balaji's biggest soaps and films, it lands as both a critique of the industry and a pitch for her own project.

Kapoor drew a clear line between her own house and TVF's. "Balaji jo banata hai aur TVF jo banata hai, our content is very different," she said, before crediting Arunabh Kumar's outfit for staying rooted, which she said is exactly why she wanted to work with him. The Vvaan, set in Bihar and built around the mythology of a van devi, is that collaboration.

The two producers also let slip how the partnership actually came together, and it wasn't in a boardroom. Kapoor called Kumar her "mandir friend," saying their pitch sessions happened across temple visits rather than pitch meetings. Kumar added that even on a Goa trip meant for a holiday, they went hunting for a temple. Kapoor confirmed it, laughing that finding one in Goa on New Year's Day took some doing.

The conversation moved to Chhath Puja, which The Vvaan depicts through its song 'Chhathi Maiya,' a moment that's rare for Hindi cinema and has clearly struck a chord already. Tamannaah Bhatia spent a chunk of the event talking about it, and offered two small, telling anecdotes to prove the reaction is real beyond the trailer's numbers.

Her pandit, she said, caught her right after Ganesh visarjan and told her the whole family would be watching the film, having clocked the finer details of the Chhath celebration in the song itself. Her watchman asked her outright if she was making a film on Chhath, prompting her to clarify that the story is actually about a van devi, with Chhath woven into it as a significant thread.

"Chhath is not just a festival, it's an emotion," Bhatia said, adding that the sequence in the film has been built with what she called real devotion and sincerity.

Whether Kapoor's broader dig at the industry sticks or gets brushed off as event-day sound and fury is a separate question. What's not in doubt is that The Vvaan is leaning hard on its regional, festival-rooted identity as a selling point, right down to who's reacting to it before release. The film hits cinemas on September 25, and that Chhath sequence will be the first thing audiences check against the buzz.