New Delhi, June 13 -- every line of dialogue is sung. There is no spoken conversation in the film. Characters express anger, love, grief and everyday banalities through melody, and the audience is asked to accept this as the natural mode of communication in the world the film creates. Singeetham Srinivasa Rao is 94 years old. He has been carrying this idea for nearly four decades.

the people of Kuberapuram will no longer be able to speak. Whatever they wish to communicate must be done through song. The curse is both punishment and metaphor, a way of saying that a community that destroyed its natural voice must now find an artificial one.

Ayaan plays Pratap, a man recently released from prison who arrives in Kuberapuram seeking ancestral...