in Papanasam R.F., Tamil Nadu. Shakti Singh dubbed for Arvind Swami in the Hindi version of the film, while Madhubala dubbed for herself. The whole film was completed in less than 60 days. The final length of the film was . Themes and influences Writing for the magazine Jump Cut, Kumudan Maderya noted that Roja celebrates "the middle-class yuppie hero’s nationalistic fervor" and positions the "anti-national communalist terrorists in Kashmir" as key threats to India as a whole. Vairamuthu, who was signed as the lyricist, felt the film's "tense and action-packed" content was in sharp contrast to the "poetic" title. Journalist Malini Mannath and a writer for Bangalore Mirror compared Roja to Held Hostage (1991), a television film about the kidnapping of journalist Jerry Levin whose rescue was organised by his wife. Soundtrack The soundtrack and background score for the film was composed by A. R. Rahman in his debut as a music director. Mani Ratnam, who previously worked with Ilayaraaja in his earlier films, replaced him with Rahman, who worked as a keyboard programmer for Ilayaraaja for his film Moodu Pani (1980), also marking their first collaboration as well. The album features seven tracks in Tamil and Hindi, and six tracks in Telugu, Malayalam Marathi and five tracks in the instrumental adaptation album. The song "Thamizha Thamizha" is a poem written by Subramanya Bharathi. "Chinna Chinna Aasai" was the first song Rahman had composed for the film. The song "Kadhal Rojave" has two versions in both Tamil and Hindi; a solo and a duet in the former. The Hindi version of the song, titled "Roja Jaaneman", has two versions – one by S. P. Balasubrahmanyam and the other by Hariharan. The album received critical acclaim and was also listed in Time magazine's "10 Best Soundtracks" of all time. The Tamil and Hindi versions of the album sold over million units in India, with the Tamil version selling over 200,000 units and the Hindi version selling 2.8million units. Release Roja was released on 15 August 1992, and distributed by GV Films. In August 2015, it was screened at the 2015 London Indian Film Festival, in the retrospective series Politics as Spectacle: The Films of Mani Ratnam, along with Bombay and Dil Se. Owing to the film’s success, the film was dubbed and released in Hindi, Telugu, Marathi and Malayalam languages. Reception Critical response Roja received positive reception for its patriotic