Picture this. A young woman who lives with an aunt falls in love with a Tamil Nadu native who irons clothes for a living. She then decides to elope with him in hopes of a happily-ever-after.
However, tragedy strikes as she is soon sold into the sex trade by the persons she loved.
This agonising tale of deception, drawn from several true-to-life stories, has been aptly conveyed in ‘Amala’, a 12-minute romantic musical thriller.
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Directed by B Govind Raj and Vinith Santhosh, it aims to highlight the perils of young people, who fall prey to sexual slavery in the name of love.
Govind believes more discussions and awareness on this topic is the need of the hour.
“Mostly, it is young women from middle class and lower income families who find themselves in this predicament. This story needs to be told. So, when Vinith came to me with a similar story, we decided to go ahead with the musical thriller” he said.
A Tamil romantic track ‘Kanukkul Kadhal’composed by P S Jayahari and sung by Sreekanth Hariharan and Amrita Jayakumar merges well with the storyline.
“I was very particular that ‘Amala’ should feature a romantic song because I needed viewers to be convinced the duo were truly in love. Also, we used a Tamil song, because it has the ability to express emotions so purely. We selected one track from the five songs composed by Jayahari,” Govind said.
The directors roped in Lakshmi Priyaa Chandramouli who acted in the movie ‘Salt Mango Tree’ as the female lead.
“Lakshmi has a very good following in Tamil and looked very convincing as Amala,” says Vinith. Rahul R Nair, plays the male lead. “Since we used a Tamil track, the male lead was depicted as a Tamilian.
We do not have any intention of portraying Tamil Nadu natives in a bad light,” said Govind.
‘Amala’ is produced by Santhosh Ravindran under the banner of Talkies Travancore. Abhimanyu Sadanandan cranked the camera while Aravind Manmadhan edited the work. Sangeeth Senan and Vishak Chandran handled the production design.
Except for the climax, all other scenes were shot at various locations in Thiruvananthapuram. ‘Amala’ was officially released by actor Prithviraj Sukumaran through his Facebook page.
With actors Vineeth Sreenivasan, Aju Varghese, Basil Joseph, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Aditi Balan, Aparna Balamurali sharing and appreciating the short fiction on social media platforms, it has received over 1.25 lakh views. The project took nearly two and a half years to complete