When Dharani Dharan quit his cushy IT job, he had only one goal in mind — to enter Kollywood and direct his own film. So, after assisting Susi Ganesan in Kandasamy and Short Cut Romeo, he decided to go to the next level.
“I went back to the US and did a six month course in Digital Filmmaking at the New York Film Academy. I wrote a bunch of off-beat scripts but there was no market for them at the time.
But I happened to run into my producer, SudharshanVembutty, who liked the script of Burma. After he approved, we started shooting immediately,” says Dharani Dharan.The film with the unusual title is based on car seizing, “Car seizing is done by privately hired recovery teams when loans are not repaid on time. It’s a dangerous business. To research, I went to some North Madras areas where the car seizers operate from. To get a better understanding of how it works, I even met a person called Burma, who is the best car seizer in the business. We got a No Objection Certificate from him to use his name as the title,” he says.
Michael and Reshmi Menon are the lead pair, while Sabesh Karthik plays an important character. How did he think of this unusual subject? Dharani smiles, “One of my friends knew people in this business. When we got talking I realised how dangerous it was. These guys take a gamble on their lives each day, just for the salary. That gave me an idea for this story.”
Dharani recalls, “For one month, I shot every scene with Michael, on a 5D camera, like a rehearsal, before the actual shoot began.” One of the highlights of the film is bound to be the luxurious BMW X6 SUV. “We needed a posh, `1 crore car for the movie. I showed my script to the BMW team and they approved of it and lent us an BMW X6,” grins Dharani.