This director’s life story rivals a movie script

Chennai: As a ten-year-old boy, Sherief used to work at a book-binding unit on Mint Street in the city for a wage of 15 a day. He had to turn the wheel of the manual paper-cutting machine. Sometimes it would leave him with blisters on his hands. At the end of every week, Sherief would get 90 and, after giving some money to his parents, he would spend the rest to watch movies.Fast forward a couple of decades. Sherief, now 33, is a movie director and his ‘Ranam’, a mystery-thriller starring Vaibhav, is scheduled to be released next month. His journey from child-labourer to movie director was not easy. Sherief grew up in Washermenpet where his father Gows Moideen delivered water cans and mother Meera was a tailor. The family’s circumstances saw Sherief dropping out from a private school after Class V to start work. “Some of my friends had already started working during the summer holidays. I too decided to work,” Sherief told TOI. However, fate in the form of volunteer teachers at a nearby evening tuition centre intervened. “My teachers at the evening school Chithra, Selvi and Dhanam came to my house and spoke to my parents. My mother wanted me to continue my studies. They said the fees in government-aided school would be less and I was enrolled again at St Agnes School in Broadway,” said Sherief.He also worked part-time pasting posters of movies screened at Bharath, Maharani and MM theatres and also posters of magazines on weekends. “I used to go to work at 3am to avoid being spotted by friends. I would earn fifty paise to one rupee for sticking a poster. I bought notebooks with the money,” Sherief said. The Arunodhaya Centre for Street and Working Children also helped. “They used to organise children’s association meetings twice a month for rehabilitated children. We used to discuss bad roads, mosquitoes and lack of streetlights. We were also trained to write awareness dramas, sing songs and play instruments. I wrote plays against child labour and directed skits,” Sherief said. After school he studied an animation course, and later visual communication before entering the film industry. He worked in music, art direction, cinematography, and movie production. His first movie was dropped due to the pandemic. Ranam’s story was written during the lockdown. Sherief said the movie will have real-life characters he met in his life.“He achieved his childhood dream of becoming a movie director despite many hurdles. He is a role model and inspiration to several children from underprivileged backgrounds,” said Virgil D Sami, executive director of the Arunodhaya Centre.
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