P.S. Vinothraj
IN 2021 | Tiger Award, Rotterdam 2021
75 min | HD | Tamil
Sc: P.S. Vinothraj | DOP: Jeya Parthiban, Vignesh Kumulai | E: Ganesh Siva
SD: Hari Prasad | M: Yuvan Shankar Raja | P+Sales: Rowdy Pictures | With
Karuththadaiyaan, Chellapandi
tuesday 12 oct 18.00 theatiner filmkunst
The inhabitants of the village Arittapatti in southern India depend entirely on agriculture, which has suffered terribly due to a long drought. The fields have become deserts and the skinny livestock eat the last leaves. The women catch and roast rats or wait for hours until it is their turn to pull muddy water from the well. The men hang around, play cards and sleep. One of the latter is Ganapathy, a chain-smoking drunk with a permanent frown. His wife has fled the home and his domestic violence, but he is determined to fetch her back from her village. He forces his young son to join him. A constant sense of anger and the threat of violence raise the temperature even more in the desolate landscape, filmed as beautiful, yet forbidding. The father-son relationship is deeply disturbed, yet they are inexorably drawn together. It seems inevitable that the still-innocent boy will go down the same path his father did. Their pointless journey illustrates the disruptive influence of grinding poverty. (IFFR)
P.S. Vinothraj While working in a DVD store in Chennai, he met people from the Tamil film industry. He became an assistant director on two films by A. Sargunam. Assistant director at the theater. PEBBLES is his feature film debut.
Films Pebbles 2021