Ibrahim’s seek for closure after a tragedy takes him by the crucible of vengeance and fury. For actor Roshan Mathew, Ibrahim, his character in Manu Warrier’s Malayalam movie Kuruthi, is a brand new one in his oeuvre.
“Ibrahim loses his father, brothers and his loved ones and is struggling with the loss every day, even with the will to live. That is where the story of Kuruthi begins. A series of events make him question many things he believes in. It puts him in a situation where he is forced to fight, a fight he was not prepared for. Eventually, he has to face his demons, physically and emotionally,” says Roshan, concerning the movie that’s presently streaming on Amazon Prime.
On his second outing with Prithviraj after Anjali Menon’s Koode, Roshan says the senior actor’s ardour for cinema and self-discipline encourage him. “For Kuruthi, we were together from the first day to the last day of the shoot. Day in and day out, I noticed that he comes in with the same level of energy and it stays till pack up. It is the process of making a film that gives him the energy.”
In The OTT Space
Kuruthi is Roshan’s fifth movie that’s premiering on OTT, after the success of Mahesh Narayanan’s C U Soon, Anurag Kashyap’s Choked, Siddarth Siva’s Varthamanam and Aanum Pennum, an anthology.
OTT releases has come as a blessing in disguise for Roshan. With subtitling necessary for such releases, Malayalam movies have garnered huge audiences. Although Roshan’s Kappela was pulled out of theatres simply as Kerala went right into a lockdown in March 2020, it gained extra viewers after it was launched on OTT. Roshan agrees that OTT platforms have been a lifeline for the movie trade as soon as theatres had been closed.
He feels he was lucky to have executed some work earlier than the lockdown and people had been launched in the course of the lockdown. CU Soon was the one movie that was shot in the course of the first lockdown.
“I am lucky that even in these times, there was an avenue and an audience for the films. OTT platforms have made movies from regional industries much more accessible,” he believes.
He provides that whereas Malayalam motion pictures have all the time been relatable even to non-Malayalis, OTT platforms take it into the houses of viewers and so these movies are getting the eye they deserve. “Malayalam films have been innovating because viewers encourage such efforts. That sort of evolution may have run out of fuel if it were not for our films accessing a different sort of audience through these platforms,” he explains.
Asked if he would take pleasure in working in mini-series made for OTT platforms, he asserts that there is no such thing as a restrictions on language, format or platform if he’s working with individuals whose work excites him. “ I am open to anything I feel like trying. Who I get to work with is a big factor in choosing my films. Fortunately for me, a lot of those decisions have paid off,” he says, citing working with Geetu Mohandas for Moothon for instance. As an instance, he says that as quickly as Geetu Mohandas referred to as him for a gathering for Moothon, he knew he was going to do the movie even earlier than he heard the story.
The actor has simply wrapped up the capturing of Chathuram (Malayalam) and the big-budget Darlings (Hindi), directed by Jasmeet Okay Reen and starring Alia Bhatt, Shefali Shah and Vijay Varma.
“A comedy, Darlings is entirely different from the dark and comparitively small-budget Choked in terms of scale and the amount of planning that goes into each scene. I have seen some of them in theatre and it was wonderful to act with them. Almost all my scenes have one or the other character as the entire film revolves around the three characters and I am the only other person who is there,” he says.
Roshan can be working in Tamil movie Cobra and veteran Sibi Malayil’s Koth with Asif Ali. The different tasks he’s wanting ahead to incorporate Ranam-director Nirmal Sahadev’s Kumari with Aiswariya Lekshmi, Liquor Island with Suraj Venjaramoodu and Sreejith N’s Oru Thekkan Thallu Case starring Biju Menon, Padmapriya and Nimisha Sajayan.
