When snow hit Oraalpokkam shoot!

The snowfall that form the opening visuals of Sanal Sasidharan’s critically-acclaimed Oraalpokkam delighted its audience but the director now tells us those scenes were fraught with danger. The crew filmed the scene in the Himalayan Ghats, a month after the catastrophic floods that wreaked havoc in North India in 2013.
They were on their way to a location to film a scene when it unexpectedly started snowing, immobilising them.Seeing snowfall for the first time, the director and the cinematographer started to shoot it excitedly even though actor Prakash Bare alerted them on how it will block the ways ahead.
“We got stuck as the snow filled the way further. We had to seek help from the rescue operators to get out of it,” says the director. “The next adventure was to find a shelter as there were no people or hotels nearby because the schedule was soon after the catastrophe. After hours of searching, we found out a small room and the entire team had to find space in that for a day.”
Sanal also explains Prakash Bare had a really tough time alerting every one. “Because he was familiar with snowfalls, he panicked the most and also tried hard to convince us. But we kept on shooting,” says the director. “At the end, we had to admit that we should have listened to him.”
The scenes they filmed were used as part of the opening visuals and received a lot of accolades from the audience. “The snowfall ultimately turned out to be a blessing in disguise. That was the major highlight of the film,” he adds.
Oraalpokkam, which is the first Malayalam movie produced through crowd funding, narrates the journey of a man, played by Prakash Bare, who has been jerked out of his ‘free’ urban and promiscuous existence by the mysterious disappearance of his estranged lover, played by Meena Kandasamy.