A family movie

Nila Chandana and little sister Soorya Chandana have just gotten back home from school. Soorya came home all elated. That was the day she watched herself on screen amid rousing cheers from her classmates. “Now I feel I acted better,” she chuckles after her second outing to watch her own performance in Kuttikalundu Sookshikkuka. The first time, she was accompanied by her mom and elder sister to the theatre.

The tag of a children’s movie fits this film in many respects. The film marks director Kalavoor Ravikumar’s two daughters, Nila and Soorya, getting initiated into the world of cinema.  

During the past summer vacation, Soorya’s elder sister Nila placed only one demand before her dad to wisely spend the two-month vacation before the all-important plus-two – to let her work in the movie. She joined the crew as an assistant to the director.

“I was done with attending summer classes. Achan’smovie was set in motion during my vacation and I wanted to give it a shot. Before joining the sets, I told my friends about how I was going to spend my vacation. My job was to hit the clapperboard and prepare log sheet. The data I entered on the sheet was later fed on a software,” says Nila.

Papa Ravikumar didn’t have to struggle to find the right role for chatterbox Neenu Thomas. “I first discussed the script with my children. So they knew, better than anyone else, what was there in it. I felt my younger one fits into the role as the friend of two brothers portrayed by Sanoop and Siddharth. Instead of searching and finding another child and training her, she was picked. Also it was her debut in acting,” says Ravikumar.

In the movie, Soorya acts as the daughter of Anumol. About her maiden acting experience, the fourth-grader says: “I was told to be a vayadi kutty (talkative girl). Both achan and chechi were there to teach me how to act. I got prompted dialogues from chechi and I was confident to act,” gushes Soorya.

The director says children have welcomed the movie. “School students constitute a plum share of our viewers. From the feedback we receive, the teachers who first the watch movie prefer to take the students to theatres. In many schools, they are being taken in groups,” says Ravikumar.    

The film had Anoop Menon and Bhavana playing parents to the children in lead.