One hundred and twenty one brothers for one sister. That's the one liner Dijo Jose Antony heard from two new writers – Sharis Mohammed and Jebin Joseph Antony – who wanted to do a film. He liked it. That was the time he wanted to make a feature film, after a stint of short film making. He went seeking actors, stars. After a point, perhaps a year later, he called up the writers who too had by then given up on the script. Dijo told them about making the film with new actors, all of the cast. They were in, so were Dijo's producers, Shibu K. Moideen and Rinshad V. So Queen was made, and days before its release, Dijo has left his IT job in Kochi, to be with his Queen all the time.
“There's so much to do, fixing the background score and everything,” says the new filmmaker who had once been a musician. That was in college, at FISAT, doing his engineering.
“There was this music album called La Cochin, sung by Vineeth Sreenivasan. Those were not YouTube days. So people heard it through television channels . It was a music of friendship –- 25 friends from different colleges coming together,” he says. His inspiration had been his friend and musician Jakes Bejoy, who has turned composer for Queen.
The love for music turned into filmmaking. So after college and after Dijo got himself placed in an IT company in Thiruvananthapuram, he began making short films. He entered feature films as an assistant director for the movie Angels.
The one liner for Queen struck him for another reason – an image that Sri Buddha Engineering College had used for some celebration, of a woman surrounded by many men. In his film too, it is the story of nine heroes and a heroine. “We had eight levels of audition to find these heroes. I wanted the characters to be different from what we usually see, the physique, the gestures etc,” Dijo says.
After another three levels of audition, he found his Queen, a newcomer called Saniya. “One may wonder about the title, when there are so many men. It is not just a fun film. It is that too, but the content gets deeper as the film proceeds. You will understand only when you watch it,” he says.
Dijo, with all his love for music, didn't go into composing. Jakes took care of everything. “If you have a music sense, you can make a film, edit, or whatever,” believes Dijo.
He is planning to go back to his IT job while still pursuing his passion for cinema. Queen will release on January 12.
