Kerala State Best Film director Krishand: Hope Avasvyuham can serve as a documentation of the issues in Puthuvype

Krishand was ‘not reachable’ on his mobile for a while after the 52nd Kerala State Film Awards was announced on Friday evening. The director of

Best Film Avasvyusham

(

The Arbit Documentation of an Amphibian Hunt

) says he was “overwhelmed to hear the news” .
“I was with the main actors Sreenath Babu and Rahul Rajagopal, when the news was being relayed live, and we were thrilled to hear the news. I am not one for big emotions — I tend to go into a shell during emotional moments — so I finally switched off my phone. But this win gives a crazy good feeling that we can do something resourceful and ambitious in vision. I think it is an endorsement for good cinema on the whole,” says the director, who co-wrote the story with

Renoy Scaria Jose

.

The film, which also won awards at the 26th IFFK earlier this year, is a sort of environmental fantasy and starting with the title, is quirky through and through. The Puthuvype-based story, told over three phases, follows a ‘superhero’ and the ‘battles’ that he comes up against, amidst the narrative of a team’s research into new frog species in the Western Ghats. “Usually, the superhero’s fight is against the system and I felt that we could smartly show how he goes against the administration, but we also showed fights against more common, cinematic villains to appeal to all audiences,” says Krishand.

Ask him if he is an environmentalist and Krishand says that he feels that he definitely shared concerns during the shoot, though he wouldn’t call himself an activist. Puthuvype, an eco sensitive coastal region, had seen intense protests by local residents and environmentalists in 2017 over the setting up of an IOC LPG plant. “Ifeel the lasting impact of the film could be in the fact that it generates a curiosity on the region. Also, let there be a documentation about things such as Section 144 (mentioned a couple of times in the movie) being imposed for all this time in the region,” says Krishand.

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