Ratnaja is a Kannada movie writer and director. He debuted his career as a director with the 2005 hit movieNenapirali which won four awards at the 2005-06 Karnataka State Film Awards, including the Best Director award.^[1][2]

Ratnaja was a Mechanical Engineering student at the National College of Engineering,Mysuru. Ratnaja then trained under many acclaimed directors likeDinesh Baboo andSV Rajendra Singh Baboo for five years as assistant.

Ratnaja began his direction career with the filmNenapirali. The film starred four relatively fresh faces -Prem Kumar who received a new lease of life with this movie, Naveen Krishna,Vidya Venkatesh and Varsha. Nenapirali focused on the youth and their confusion about love, and was critically and commercially a success. The film won awards at the Filmfare Awards that year (2005–06), and also picked up a couple of State Awards. Ratnaja was called, by certain quarters, as Kannada'sMani Ratnam. His next film was calledHonganasu. He repeated the same leads - Prem and Naveen Krishna. The film also had music by the maestroHamsalekha. The film released in early 2008 amidst much fanfare, but it failed to live up to expectations of both critics and audience. The criticism leveled against Ratnaja was weak narration, and the audience refused to humour the film. Ratnaja later made a film titledPremism which again was not very well received by the audience. His next film is titledPreethiyalli Sahaja and was released in 2016.^[3]

• Nenapirali

• Kannada film directors
• Filmfare Awards South winners
• 21st-century Indian people

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