Suresh Selvarajan

Suresh was born in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu.^[3] He received a state award for painting at the age of nineteen.^[4]

Suresh began as an assistant to production designer Sabu Cyril. His first significant project was working alongside Sabu Cyril on the iconic film "Enthiran (2010)", featuring Rajinikanth. This marked the beginning of Suresh's successful career, spanning nearly a decade during which he collaborated with Sabu Cyril on 14 films.^[5]

In 2017, Suresh collaborated with director Koratala Siva on Bharat Ane Nenu (2018), which marked their first collaboration where he designed the exact replica of the State Legislative Assembly at a studio in Hyderabad.^[6] In addition to this, he also designed a temple set worth Rs 4 crore for the "Vachaadayyo Saami" song sequence, which only appeared once in the movie.^[7] Suresh's work on Bharat Ane Nenu made an impression on Koratala Siva which eventually made him select Suresh as the production designer for Acharya (2022).^[8]

For the film Acharya, Suresh was responsible for designing the fictional town of Dharmasthali which is the biggest set erected in India.^[8] The set was built over 20 acres and included a temple, a tribal area, and a river bed. Suresh's work on the film was praised by the producer Ram Charan,^[9] critics and audiences alike.^[1][10] Suresh took four months to come up with the blueprint and another three months for the construction. The fictional town was later rented out to Salman Khan's Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan free of charge.^[11]

On February 27, 2023, a major fire incident occurred on the Acharya film set, located near Kokapet Lake on the outskirts of Hyderabad. The grand temple structure of Dharmasthali was engulfed in flames, with a video of the fire circulating online. Reports suggested that someone present on the set was smoking a cigarette, and after discarding the cigarette butt, a fire erupted.^[12][13]