Bombing cyber warriors

Dawn to noon to moon, a young man is putting in all his efforts for ‘society’. He’s toiling hard on a keyboard. On social media he exhorts, challenges, takes a dig at anything under the sun that he feels like ripping off. The ‘society’ returns him truck loads of likes, comments, shares and what more? A good fan-base.

But at the end of the day, he’s totally penniless. Isn’t it too bad? Shouldn’t this ‘under employment’ be addressed? Definitely yes. Techie filmmaker Jophin Varghese’s Immini Balya Bomb Katha leads you through the right track. The techie filmmaker, since releasing this satirical short film on YouTube after it winning a special jury mention at the Qisa short film festival of Technopark, is being showered with accolades.

Cut to the director. “These people around us know what goes around in the world, with least knowledge on the happenings next door, what is there around his home and premises. These people muster some courage and act at the spur of the moment. In reality, we would understand, rather than the war of words they are good at, they barely do anything to bring about a change or for the societal good,” says Jophin.

The crux is an overnight turn of events in the life of Pradeep P.K., a self-proclaimed social activist/commentator on Facebook. The trigger is a Facebook wall update. Our protagonist is blood thirsty, to avenge Ponnu Chami, the rape accused. His mobile phone reverberates to an unknown call one night after putting up this post. From the other side is an offer to be a ‘human bomb’ and blow up the culprit the very next day. The next few seconds of this call yank the veil of the social media warrior, who is merely reduced to nothing. His attempt to escape is foiled by ‘Kerala Tigers’ stationed outside his home in the dead of the night. Still, he manages a way out, which takes the plot to more interesting turns and climax.

The fun does not end with the content. The scroll duly credits five names under the head of producers, for an investment of '6000! “We managed with things readily available to us. I had a camera. The producers are my friends. The ‘expensive’ part was with audio and background scoring, that too done by my friends at an affordable cost,” says Jophin.

The film was released on YouTube by director Siddique.