Sabareesh Ravi’s new short film, Mirage, is travelling from place to place across Europe and the USA, winning hearts in different film festivals. The six-minute-long movie narrates the encounter between an astronaut who seems to have lost her way while exploring water and life in an exile part of a planet. The planet is not deliberately mentioned as either Earth or Mars. But the lady astronaut is out in the sandy and grim land alone. The movie goes to another level when she meets a boy who appeared to be tired of lack of enough resource to keep him alive.
Director Sabareesh Ravi, who is also an artist and graphic designer, says he is trying to narrate a big concept in an abstract fashion.
The astronaut is a representation of our progress in modern science and the child is a concealed reality that we await. “Mirage is an illusion. As our planet is advancing in a rapid manner, future cataclysm is a mirage for mankind or something that we do not reckon in our daily lives. Modern science has taken us into space and also furthering in the area of space research. We understand the possibilities and the unpredictability of this vast universe to an extent,” says Sabareesh. The short film also attempts to symbolise the feminine virtues of motherly gentleness and compassion through the lady astronaut.
The short film has been selected to numerous international festivals including the renowned Istambul International Film Festival. “I am happy that the short film is doing well at the festivals, especially at international ones. The selection committee mailed me and congratulated me with a note appreciating my work. It was actually a shock for me for some time and I checked the list of the movies that got selected to confirm the news,” laughs Sabareesh. “Though the movie had already reached semi finals at the Los Angeles Film Festival and Brooklyn Rebel Minded Festivals and won Award of Recognition in Accolade Global Film Competition in California, getting selected to Istanbul was really a shocker.” Sabareesh’s previous short film, Paper, received many accolades and was selected to many prestigious festivals, too. When he started off with this project, he says many came forward with skeptical remarks. “The theme and the way I was going to narrate it was different. An astronaut and a kid? What’s that going to convey? People were doubtful. But I could convince them and everything went well during the shoot as it demanded a lot of time and effort, especially from the art team and the cinematographer.” Sabareesh did the scripting himself and he also covered some art works in the movie. Mithun Manu and Lakshmi Gopinathan are the only actors in the short film which has no dialogues in it. Eldho Issac handled the camera and Karthik Murali Manikavasan composed the music. Sabareesh is hopeful that he will be able to reach out to film festivals that he has been invited to, before the expected release of the film next year.
