At a grand Peddi event in Vijayawada, director Buchi Babu Sana said the film’s final 40 to 50 minutes still make him emotional, even after he has watched it close to 100 times during the making process. That is the kind of comment that turns a pre-release appearance into a fresh burst of interest around Ram Charan’s film.

Sana framed Peddi as an emotional journey about a sportsperson who earns identity and respect, stumbles several times and keeps rising. He said the project has been on his mind since Uppena, the film that marked his debut five years ago and later won a National Award, and that he told the audience he had been working on Peddi since then.

That matters now because the director is not presenting Peddi as just another star vehicle. He described it as a story of perseverance that families and children can watch together, and he said Ram Charan accepted the story exactly as it was narrated. For a film being positioned for broad family appeal, that kind of endorsement from the director is part of the campaign.

The scale, though, raises the stakes. Sana said Uppena was made on a budget of around Rs 25 crore, while Peddi has been mounted at nearly Rs 350 crore. He said producer Satish gave him complete freedom and that he made the film with great care and responsibility. That leaves the film carrying both an emotional promise and a heavy commercial burden, because a story built around sensitivity has to reach audiences at a size far larger than his debut.

There is also a personal thread running through his remarks in Vijayawada. Sana said he has an emotional bond with the city, where he wrote the story of Uppena while studying at Nagarjuna University and travelling by bicycle, and where he received news that he was going to become a father. He also credited Sukumar with introducing him to Ram Charan, saying that after the anxiety that followed Uppena, he found support in a star who trusted the narration without asking for a single correction.

The question Peddi now has to answer is not whether its maker believes in it. Sana clearly does. He said friends who watched the film told him he had made a good one and assured him that audiences would connect with it. What remains unresolved is the one verdict that matters: whether that emotional final stretch, the part that still moves him after nearly 100 viewings, lands with viewers the same way once the film reaches them.