The Jitendra Joshi-starrer Godavari (2021) was all set to be released in theatres on Friday 3 December. But the makers have decided at the eleventh hour to postpone the film. A fresh release date has not been announced.
Sharing the news, director Nikhil Mahajan told Cinestaan.com, “We had initially decided to release our film on 3 December, but we are no longer releasing it on that day for multiple reasons. One of the reasons is that [the physical edition of] PIFF [the Pune International Film Festival] is beginning on the same day. A third of my audience for Godavari is Pune-based and these people will be busy at PIFF.”
Only yesterday, Godavari brought Joshi the Best Actor award and Mahajan the Special Jury award at the 52nd International Film Festival of India (IFFI).
The director said they now plan to send the film to a few more festivals. “Now that we have won prestigious awards at IFFI, we thought let the film gather more momentum," he said. "So we have decided to participate in more festivals. This will give us a chance to gain more word-of-mouth publicity if we bag a few more awards. So we have decided to push the release date ahead. But we are definitely looking for a theatrical release.”
The film was initially scheduled to be released on 1 May 2021, but the makers had to put off that plan on account of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Along with Joshi, Godavari stars Vikram Gokhale, Neena Kulkarni, Priyadarshan Jadhav and Gauri Nalawade.