When efforts pay off
Short film Nee En Sarga Soundaryame, directed by Divakrishna V.J. has been noticed for its interesting plot.
These are indeed good times for Malayalam cinema. Some of the best movies the industry has seen hit the screens in the recent times, especially this year. They are characterised by out-of-the-box thinking and fresh storylines. Looks like Malayalam short films are also catching up the trend. Nee En Sarga Soundaryame, directed by debutant Divakrishna V.J., is the most recent example. The 18-minute-long short film that was released online reently tells the story of a middle-aged man who gets distressed after visiting a clinic for his fertility test.
Divakrishna says the story was not written in one day. “I have been thinking about it for a few years. In 2016, while chatting with my friends, to kill boredom I started narrating an instance that could happen in medical laboratories. It was about a man finding it difficult to go through a sperm test since he is too shy to visit the lab. Once he arrives at the laboratory, he gets distressed after he is asked to collect the semen at the washroom. This is what I told my friends. They found the plot really interesting and asked me to do a short film based on it. I worked out a script with my co-writer Kailash S. Bhavan. But we could not carry on with the project then.”
Divakrishna, who used to shoot small videos using his mobile phone before venturing into filmmaking, says he had to wait until he could gather a team of experts, thanks to Facebook. “I talked to a few via Facebook and finalsied the team. But it went on and finally we were able to finish it in October last year. More hurdles came our way and the release dates had to be postponed many times. Finally, the film has been released and we are getting some great comments about it also.” The film has gathered more than 23,000 views, but more importantly caught the eye of many filmmakers and others from the industry. The storyline of the short film is really tricky as it might convey a totally wrong idea to the spectators. “There are scenes that show the protagonist Dinesh (Jibin G. Nair) finding it hard to find a proper space to collet semen for the test. Actually, we had to film those scenes for the second time because we thought the scenes shot first were too lousy and could convey a negative message. We were portraying the distress of a man over a thin line of success and failure. Our effort could have failed, but luckily the idea got noticed and the audience accepted the positive side as we had hoped,”says Divakrishna.
Divakrshna has already planned how to market his work and had a theatre screening in Thiruvananthapuram. Theatre release is now common for short films, but the way the crowd responded to it was not normal and he thanks the online platforms for it. He has been filming his works using mobile camera and the way he executed this one, some might find it hard to digest the fact that this is the first project that he shot professionally. He has also acted in some short films.
Divakrishna who idolise Priyadarshan, says his ultimate dream is to direct a feature film. But he is very patient and ready to get to his goal taking one step at a time.