Teenager Janaki and her scrawny paramour visit the city behind her mother’s back. He’s arranged for a ride from his boss, a sullen man who tells Janaki that he knows she’s lied to her mother. The trio drive into the city where the teenagers are besotted with the lights, the malls and the beach. They lose track of time and are forced to stay the night in a bare-bones motel where the horrors begin. A magic realist portrait of India’s growing pains from the director of SEXY DURGA, Sanal Kumar Sasidharan returns in his biggest production yet with Malayalam powerhouse performers Joju George and Nimisha Sajayan.

Genre: Drama
Languages: Malayalam
Length: 116 min
Country: India
Production Year: 2019

Born in 1977 in Kerala, India. Started as a lawyer, Sanal Kumar Sasidharan formed a film society Kazhcha Film Forum in 2001 for making independent movies through crowd-funding. His debut feature, Oraalppokkam (Six Feet High, 2014), won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Director, while his sophomore, Ozhivudivasathe Kali (An Off-Day Game, 2015), was awarded Best Feature Film. His third film, Sexy Durga (2017) gains global attention and is the winner of the Hivos Tiger award at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam.

FILMOGRAPHY :

2014  Six Feet High (Oraalppokkam)
2015  An Off-Day Game (Ozhivudivasathe Kali)
2017  Sexy Durga
2018  Death of Insane (Unmadiyude Maranam)
2019  Shadow of Water (Chola)

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Chola investigates the assumptions men and woman make of each other. The men in the film try to dominate the young woman , Janaki, either by offering ‘divine’ love or by conquering her physically and  psychologically through sexual aggression. Janaki herself struggles between her deeply ingrained beliefs of men as protectors and her instinctual distrust and fear of men. I hope these characters will give rise to a number of questions about gender dynamics in practice in modern India.