The debutant-directed action thriller casts her as a Gond tribal woman, and the actor has said she tore a hip tendon shooting its combat sequences.
The teaser for Mysaa dropped and it does not look like anything Rashmika Mandanna has done before. Gone is the girl-next-door register. What's here instead is a woman sitting at the bottom of a river holding a sickle, staring at the camera like she means it.
Mysaa is directed by debutant filmmaker Rawindra Pulle, and the teaser opens with Mandanna's voiceover as the title character: "I am tired, I have stopped, I have lost." That's the setup. What follows is combat, a bike chase, underwater sequences and a general sense that this character has nowhere left to retreat to.
She plays a woman from the Gond tribal community, and both Free Press Journal and Onmanorama describe the role as one built around confronting the pressures society puts on her. That's a departure for an actor best known for the Pushpa films and glossy romantic leads. Viewers online have been split on it, per Free Press Journal's report, some impressed by the darker tone and the physical transformation, others waiting to see whether the story backs up the intensity of the footage.
The production isn't small. Shreyaas P Krishna handles the camera, Jakes Bejoy has scored the film, and international action choreographer Andy Long is credited with the combat design, according to Free Press Journal. Onmanorama names Ajay Saipureddy, Anil Saipureddy and Veerasai Gopa as producers under the Unform banner, spelled slightly differently across the two reports but clearly the same production house behind the film.
The cast around Mandanna reads like a proper ensemble rather than a solo vehicle: Eshwari Rao, Rahul Ravindran, Samuthirakani, Rao Ramesh, Shiva Kandukuri, Karthik Ranjini, Tarak Ponnappa and Nidhi Singh all feature.
The shoot wasn't easy on her body. Mandanna has previously said she tore a tendon in her right hip while filming, an injury that lines up with just how physical the teaser looks. Whatever the sequences cost her, they're front and centre in the marketing.
Mysaa is a pan-India release, going out in Telugu, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. That's a wide bet for a director making his first film, and it signals how much confidence the makers have in both Mandanna's pull and the material itself.
The film opens in theatres on November 27. Between now and then, expect a full trailer, and expect the conversation around whether Mandanna can carry an action-first film on her own to only get louder.
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