Kesav Binoy Kiran of Girls Will Be Girls fame to play a criminal in his next

With Girls Will Be Girls (2024) giving us three new talents in actors Preeti Panigrahi, Kesav Binoy Kiran and director Shuchi Talati, the industry has been keen to see their next few steps. Kiran—who played the manipulative teenager, Sri, in the coming-of-age film—has already shot his second feature, titled Saanvi. Helmed by Indian-American filmmaker Arun Konda, the crime drama sees the actor play Raghunandan Yandamuri, who, in 2014, became the first Indian-American to be sentenced to death in the United States. The thriller chronicles how Yandamuri, in October 2012, had murdered a 61-year-old Indian woman and her 10-month-old granddaughter.    

Konda approached Kiran at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles’ screening of Girls Will Be Girls for the role of the techie-turned-murderer. “It felt unreal at first when I was asked to audition for the role of a 26-year-old married man, who had been sentenced to death. I couldn’t draw any similarities [between the character and me]. Though I was gung-ho about it, I was scared too,” recalls the actor.

Saanvi was shot in the US last November and is currently in post-production. The process of becoming Yandamuri for the screen has been exhilarating for Kiran. “I had to do intense research to understand his psyche. The acting workshops, Navarasa Sadhana, and at Adishakti Theatre, that I did in the two years after Girls Will Be Girls’ shoot helped me find a direction,” he says.

Who is Raghunandan Yandamuri?

Yandamuri is an engineer, who, in 2014, was convicted of the 2012 double murder of 61-year-old Satyavathi Venna and her 10-month-old granddaughter Saanvi. The first Indian-American to be given the capital punishment in the US, he is currently imprisoned at the State Correctional Institute in Somerset, Pennsylvania.