The order is like this: the need came first, the medium came next, the idea after that. Mathukutty Xavier and his friends wanted to make a zero-budget film and that was the need. They came upon an app called Screen Recorder, that’s the second part of the story. The third was finding the idea which should not be a cliché love story. So they ended up with this: What happens when your mom joins Whatsapp? Mathukutty had no idea when he uploaded the one-and-a-half minute film #WhatsUpMom on Facebook on Friday that in six days there’d be more than six lakh views.
“We got the idea after watching Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s film Taxi at the IFFK last year. He was banned from making films so he shot a whole movie inside a taxi,” Mathukutty says. “We decided to avoid actors so there wouldn’t be any cost and the Screen Recorder would record all that was happening on the mobile phone screen. So we decided to go with a Whatsapp conversation.” In the film you see the mom starting a conversation with her son, who is shocked to see her on Whatsapp. And then he seems impatient as the screen shows ‘Mom is typing’ but nothing appears for a long time. He says he has got work and he’s going. But then the mom’s surprise reply comes, and he feels bad. You see all that in the short video with music in the background. “But we didn’t want it to appear too serious so we ended it with a funny response from the mom: Poda cherukka and a wink face.”
A lot of young people could relate to this conversation, and that, Mathukutty guesses, is the reason the film picked up so quickly. Actor Rima Kallingal had shared the film saying ‘Karayikkalleda’ (Don’t make me cry). “One of the most touching responses was when a fellow said he was reminded of his late mother, and how he had taught her to use Whatsapp.”
With Mathukutty are his friends Thomas Kurian, Alfried Kurian, Alwin Thoppan and Deborah Thampi. “We have been working on the script of a feature film when we needed this break. Before that we have been in advertising,” he says. The friends have all come to settle in Kakkanad for their filmmaking dreams. Before this, they have taken two other really short films - Don’t Smoke it away, as an anti-smoking campaign and Pazham, Pappadam, Payasam for an Onam.
