Ranabaali trailer: Vijay Deverakonda turns folk hero in colonial-era drama

Ranabaali opened a window into its world on Thursday evening with a trailer that places famine, folklore and resistance at the centre of its story. Directed by Rahul Sankrityan, the 3-minute-56-second trailer stars Vijay Deverakonda and Rashmika Mandanna, introduces Arnold Vosloo as the British colonial antagonist Sir Theodore Hector, and sets its conflict against a British-manufactured famine in South India.The trailer presents not only the rise of a hero, but the making of a legend. Moving between village memory and lived suffering, it follows how Ranabaali of Singanamala Hill comes to be remembered as a figure of defiance at a time when colonial power and hunger bear down on ordinary people.The opening stretches are built around a folk performance celebrating Ranabaali’s legacy. A folktale recounts that a woman gave birth to him in a cave years ago. A prophecy soon follows, declaring that greatness lies in his destiny. The story then shifts to a village under British rule, where people are asked to work in exchange for wages but are treated harshly instead. Between home and hardshipAt the centre of the trailer is Ranabaali’s growing anger at British control over the village. He questions why they hold power there at all. He is married to Jayamma, played by Rashmika Mandanna, and the trailer also spends time on their life at home. In one moment, Jayamma is told by her mother-in-law to provide an heir soon. Those lighter and playful exchanges sit alongside the shadow of a famine closing in on the village. As conditions worsen, Ranabaali takes it upon himself to protect his people from the calamity around them, and the trailer frames that journey as both personal and political. The trailer closes by teasing a heightened, folk-rooted moment for Deverakonda, in a stretch that echoes the imagery associated with films such as Kantara, Pushpa and Karuppu.More about the filmRanabaali is set during the Great Madras Famine of 1876–78, which devastated Rayalaseema. The story draws from a period marked by failed monsoons, crop loss, hunger and colonial policies that deepened suffering rather than easing it. The film is not positioned as a biopic of one documented rebel. Instead, it is presented as a fictional story shaped by the memory of people who resisted and endured, and whose stories survived in oral history and folklore.The film is set to release in theatres on October 16.- Ends