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A scene from Sanal Sasidharan’s film S Durga.
By Alaka Sahani
Last year, Sanal Sasidharan was in the news for his fight against the removal of his movie S Durga from the Indian Panorama of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Goa. This year, the Kerala-based director is back at Film Bazaar with his latest feature film, Shadow of Water (Chola), which has been acquired by the Hong Kong International Film Festival for world sales. In a free-wheeling conversation, he talks about Chola and the churning in the Kerala film industry.
There are similarities between S Durga and Shadow of Water (Chola). Was that a deliberate decision?
There is a little bit of similarity between the two. In Chola, a teenage girl runs away with her lover to a big city. A movie is not all about a story. You can play with the story. People may find some similarities between S Durga and Chola in terms of the basic plot — both have a fear factor and involve road trips. However, the treatment of these two movies as well as the subjects they deal with are different. Without interpreting the movie much, I can say that Chola is about mindsets. Prior to this, I made another movie, Death of Insane (Unmadiyude Maranam), which was more experimental in nature and has not been released yet. Making a movie is like a part of my life, like writing a journal.
Credit: indianexpress.com