Independent filmmaker Sanal Kumar Sasidharan, who last week won the Kerala Government’s best director award for his crowdfunded Malayalam film Oralpokkam (or Six Feet High), is now turning producer with another film, taking the same route to funding.
The new film, titled Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani , explores the contemporary moral and political ramifications of the death penalty. The title is inspired from a biblical verse in the Aramaic language, meaning ‘My God, why have you abandoned me?’ Jesus Christ had cried out “Eli Eli...’’ while dying on the Cross.
Sanal is the secretary of the Kazhcha Film Society, which produced
Of the ₹25 lakh required for
The best director and best location-sound awards have vindicated the investors’ and artistes’ faith in the Oralpokkam team’s philosophy and talents.
‘Cinema Vandi’The film has not yet been released through the theatres, but thousands of people have already seen it. “We used an innovative way for ‘film distribution,’” Sanal says. “We took our ‘Cinema Vandi’ (film wagon) to more than 100 locations to screen the film for the public.”
Not just the making and distribution, but the future of Oralpokkam also will be different. “We believe our film belongs to the society and hence, after five years, we will give up our copyright to the film and let the society at large use it anyway it likes.”
Sanal, 38, who is a lawyer by training, noted that winning the best director and best location-sound awards had made crowd-funding easier for Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani. “We have proved that crowdfunding can help promote good cinema,” Sanal said. “But, we are not just finding alternative ways of funding, we are also using alternative ways of story-telling, star-casting, distribution and non-conventional themes.”