Swetha Naagu

Swetha Naagu is a 2004 Indian devotional horror film directed by Sanjeevi starring Soundarya with Abbas and Sarath Babu in supporting roles. The film was shot simultaneously in Telugu and Kannada with the latter version titled Shwetha Naagara. Both versions had a slightly different supporting cast. The Telugu version was partially reshot and dubbed in Tamil as Madhumathi. It is the last film for Soundarya before her death on 17 April 2004.

Swetha Naagu
Directed by	Sanjeevi
Produced by	CV Reddy
Starring	Soundarya
Cinematography	Diwakar
Edited by	Lanka Bhaskar
Music by	Koti
Production company	CV Arts
Release date	18 February 2004 (2004-02-18)[1]
Running time	145 minutes (Telugu) 123 minutes (Kannada)
Country	India
Languages	Telugu Kannada

Cast

Cast (Telugu)	Cast (Kannada)	Role (Telugu)	Role (Kannada)
Soundarya		Madhumathi
Abbas		Praveen
Sarath Babu		Shankar Reddy
Jaya Prakash Reddy		Sarpararanya Dhora	Sarpa Kaadu Dhorey
Abhinayashree		Naagini
Dharmavarapu Subramanyam	Dwarakish	Ashok Kumar
Mallikarjuna Rao	Kunigal Nagabhushan	Madhumathi's guardian
Sangeeta	Sridevi	Madhumathi's mother
Raghunatha Reddy	Bank Janardhan	Praveen's father
Brahmanandam	Sanketh Kashi	chief guest
Karunas	Karibasavaiah	"Black" Baba	"Conductor" Kariyappa
Babloo Prithviraj		shapeshifting snake dancer (cameo)
Anand		tribal man
Cast (Telugu)		Role (Telugu)
Pattabhi Ram		tribal man
Kallu Chidambaram
Cast (Kannada)		Role (Kannada)
Meena		Praveen's mother

Production

The film was originally planned to be made simultaneously in Telugu and Tamil.^[2] Many resources state that this was Soundarya's 100th milestone film and also her last proper film while still alive; she died two months later in that horrible helicopter crash and the latter had further two posthumous releases in the later part of the year.^[3] A white snake from Meghalaya was used in the film.^[2] Abbas who garnered acclaim with his debut in the Tamil film, Kadhal Desam was signed to play one of the leads in the film.^[4] The film began production in mid-2003.^[4] The film was shot in Bangalore, Savanadurga alongside Yaana and Sirsi in Uttara Karnataka.^[5]

Reception

Idlebrain gave the film a rating of two-and-three-quarters out of five and wrote that "Swetha Nagu is an average devotional film. And the USP (Unique Selling Point) is Soundarya".^[3] A critic from Sify noted that "The first half of the film is interesting, but the film peters out in the second half. However the plus point of the film is Soundarya".^[6]