“Vindicated!” says J Geetha. Run Kalyani, directed by her, has won the Fipresci-India award at the 15th International Film Festival of Thrissur. Shot in the capital city, the woman-centric film is the first feature film of the award-winning documentary filmmaker. Scripted and directed by Geetha herself, the movie premièred at Kolkata in the competition section of the Kolkata International Film Festival when it won a special prize of the jury.
“For its extraordinary treatment of human psyche in subtle cinematic terms with an aura of brevity, artistic excellence, feministic flavour and reverberating connotations,” read the jury’s remarks about the film. The Fipresci jury included Premendra Mazumdar, Madhu Eravankara and Prem Chand.
J Geetha | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
Run Kalyani was written many years after Geetha wrote a prize-winning script — A Certain Slant of Light — that won the Goteborg International Film Festival’s development fund in 2008, which was about three sisters set in Kerala in the period between the seventies and the nineties. After the film had to be shelved due to lack of producers, Geetha came up with the story of a young woman, Kalyani, played by Garggi Ananthan, working as a cook in two households in the city. Madhu Neelakandan’s evocative camera follows Kalyani’s routine from day break to night. The movie is about how Kalyani forms different ties with the people in the houses she works in and how two women help each other break shackles that bind them to the mundane.
Shot with a large cast and with the help of some of the best technicians in the industry, the film was screened in the city by Soorya. Editing was done by B Ajithkumar while Sreevalsan J Menon composed the music for the film.
Madhu, Sathi Premji, Thara Kalyan, Nandu, Meera Nair, Ramesh Varma, Manoj Menon and Anoop Mohandas play important roles in the film.