An ambitious new ninety-minute documentary film about the life of ISKCON Founder Srila Prabhupada is set to be released in June this summer, and will be a historic event. It will be released in art theaters in twenty key cities throughout the U.S., beginning with New York City.

The film was originally entitled “Acharya,” but has been renamed “Hare Krishna: The Mantra, the Movement, and the Swami Who Started It All” after a successful test screening to the public in Gainesville, Florida.

“We gave them a series of titles, and they liked ‘Hare Krishna’ the best,” says director Yadubara Das. “They weren’t familiar with the word ‘Acharya,’ and besides the new title is a better description of the film.”

Calling action on the film

The documentary went into production on Srila Prabhupada’s appearance day in August 2013 and a release was originally planned for September 26^th, 2015, the 50^th anniversary of Prabhupada’s arrival in Boston.

But Yadubara, a veteran film-maker whose ISKCON classics like ‘Hare Krishna People’ were greatly appreciated by Prabhupada himself, made a widely supported decision to take his time to “get it right,” as he says.

Much of that time and effort was spent trying to step back from the overly familiar material and making sure the film was accessible to the public. While Yadubara’s earlier film ‘Your Ever Well-Wisher’ was aimed at an internal devotee audience, the main goal for this one is to introduce the general public – who may be familiar with “the Hare Krishnas” – to the person behind it all.

Director Yadubara Das oversees a scene

“Hardly anyone knows who Srila Prabhupada is,” says Yadubara. “We hope to change that.”

To achieve this goal, Yadubara amassed an extremely talented team. The director himself made his first film in 1974. His wife, co-director and screenwriter Visakha Dasi, is a professional photographer and author. Working with them was a largely younger crew: Producers Jessica Heinrich, who previously worked at BBC Worldwide in Sydney, and Lauren Ross, a film student; editors Krishna-Shakti Sanchez and Hilary Zakheim; and set designer Kuvaleshaya Zakheim.

“Hare Krishna” is an epic, moving and inspirational story shot in an up-to-date 16:9 widescreen format and created with interviews, location shots, re-enactments and archival footage.

Cinematographer Adric Watson shoots a scene

It begins with Prabhupada’s braving the Atlantic Ocean in 1965 at 69 years old and his arrival in New York on the Jaladuta. It then flashes back to his childhood and the fateful meeting where his spiritual master, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, ordered him to preach in the West.

Next, we see how Prabhupada, penniless and alone, began to inspire a generation of youth disillusioned by commercialism and the Vietnam war, and against all odds formed an unstoppable spiritual revolution.

We see how ISKCON was established in New York City and the early days at the “Matchless Gifts” storefront in 26 2^nd Avenue. And we see how Prabhupada and his pioneer disciples expanded ISKCON around the world, from San Francisco, to London, where they met and influenced the Beatles, to Russia, to India, the site of the movement’s Vaishnava roots.

Young Srila Prabhupada with his father Gour Mohan De in a re-enactment

Throughout, there is incredible archival footage – from the first ISKCON center, to Prabhupada traveling around the world and speaking with reporters, to George Harrison singing My Sweet Lord and meeting Prabhupada.

There are re-enactments of key moments from Prabhupada’s youth like his childhood Rathayatra festival, and of later moments in New York City, Los Angeles and of course his dangerous Jaladuta journey. “Kuvaleshaya built a Jaladuta set with the gangplank Srila Prabhupada walked up, all in our backyard in Alachua,” says Yadubara.

There are also many fresh new interviews, with early devotees like Mukunda Goswami, Shyamasundara Das, Malati Dasi, Yogesvara Das, Govinda Dasi, Hari Sauri Das, and Rukmini Dasi speaking for a modern audience, along with professors like Tom Hopkins, Graham Schweig and Edwin Bryant.

In a re-enactment, Srila Prabhupada offers a lamp during his b