Film on child trafficking for the Chennai audience

Malaysia-based director SD Puvanendran, who has assisted biggies like Mohan Raja and Nesan, is looking forward to launch his film Maravan in Chennai soon. The project has made it to several International Film Festivals in Dhaka and New York.

The 34-year-old filmmaker tells CE, “The story is based on child trafficking, an universal issue. The producer worked as an immigration officer and he had witnessed many gruesome incidents. That inspired me to put most of those ideas together to come up with a script.”

Though the content is message-oriented, there’s also a separate love story that runs parallelly. “Mostly people don’t watch documentaries; only people who are interested will watch them. I thought I should put all these in mainstream cinema so that it will appeal to people and create  an awareness. Though there have been a lot of movies on trafficking, the narration here makes it different from the others,” he explains.Puvanendran adds he has tried to keep it as real as possible and not dramatise or fictionalise it too much. “I had to cut down a few details as they could have been quite disturbing for young, impressionable minds.

An independent filmmaker, he hopes to make it big in Tamil cinema. “A film can get critical acclaim if you’re committed to the craft, besides holding it technically. But yes, there’s massive competition. To achieve success, we need to understand the economics of filmmaking. Certain films need an exhibition time for word-of-mouth publicity to pick up and attract various sections of audience. These days, everyone is attempting to make something different breaking away from the mainstream formula, which have adhered to hero, heroine and villain etc. Though it’s tough to work on independent films, we need more takers to make it work beating the odds. The idea is to make fresh films. Irrespective of failure, films are being made in large numbers,” he opines.

At the same time, he feels we need producers who’ll trust the directors’ vision. “Especially, when it’s a first-time director, he needs to prove himself,” he stresses. Ask him what’s next and he says, “I have always been interested in script-writing and thus, this seemed like a natural progression. I am in the process of making another film now, but I want to do full-on commercial films as well. I’d love to direct Vijay as I have worked as an assistant director for Velayudham (2011) and Jilla (2014).”