A heart-warming musical tale

Having done a few small roles and dance sequences in films like Thalapathy Vijay’s Thalaiva, GV Prakash’s Pencil, Idhu Enna Maayam and Oru Naal Iravil, youngster Pawan Alex has worked his way into K’town through his dancing skills. An alumnus of Loyola College, the 23-year-old with his childhood friends has started a production unit Lift Others. After a year of completing many formalities, the unit recently presented a musical short film, Give that revolves around the life of a young girl affected with cancer.

Dedicated to the cancer fighters, this 17-minute musical tale, produced by Equitas Bank, has 

captured many hearts in the city. The youngster opens up about how it all happened. “I lost a dear family member of mine due to cancer and it deeply affected me. I pitched the storyline of the film to my friends and they liked it too. We wanted our first project to be meaningful and have a wide reach. Since we did not want language to be a barrier, we made it a musical film with no dialogues. The lead role of the young girl is played by Smrithi. She essayed the young Nayanthara character in Kashmora. She’s a single-take artiste! She put in a lot of efforts for Give.” 

The crew comprises the Dhuruvangal Pathinaaru editor Sreejith Sarang and Premam’s associate cameraman Viswajith Odukkathil as the cinematographer, debut director Chella and Power Pandi fame Rinson as the designer of the film. 

“We screened the film first in the Adyar Cancer Institute where we made the children watch it in the presence of the Nobel Prize winner Dr Shanta. At first, the kids thought that it was a clichéd film, but when they saw the new angle to it, they loved it too!” Pawan adds. In just five days post release, Give has garnered 85,000 views and celebrities like Keerthy Suresh, Harish Kalyan, Kalidas Jayaram and many others have tweeted and shared the film.

When asked about his goal, Pawan responds, “I want to do more impactful roles in films. They needn’t be big roles, but even something that has smaller screen time and can last in the memories of the audience watching is my dream! As a group we also want to produce more meaningful projects that talk about people and can connect with their daily life. People don’t generally trust a group of youngsters working on something new — we want to break that stereotype.” 

Lift Others is also coming up with a feature film about regular people and will announce their project soon.