The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Taking it light-heartedly

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Taking it light-heartedly

Sangeetha Unnithan

Uberto Pasolini.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Manoj is an ambitious Sri Lankan youth working as a bartender in a five star hotel. The young man, like most of his contemporaries, dreams of flying to Europe, where he would toil and send back money for his extended working class family. After a rather bizarre turn of events, Manoj finally acquires his dream visa to Germany. On his last day at the hotel, he takes his family there for dinner.

His mother and sisters are all in silk and frills, and his father has slipped into a coat, probably for the first time in his life. Despite everything, Manoj feels ashamed of his family in the sophisticated surroundings of the hotel.

That night he meets his friend to say that he was dropping out of the trip to Germany. “I was so ashamed of them at the hotel today. I don’t want to hate them when I come back,” he says.

That could easily be one of the most moving film moments at the 13th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK). However, Sinhala film ‘Machan,’ directed by London-based Italian film-maker Uberto Pasolini, is anything but an emotional drama. Rather, ‘Machan’ is a film that tells a serious tale in the most light-hearted manner. And from the overwhelming response that Mr. Pasolini received from the audience after the screening of the film on Wednesday, ‘Machan’ is also easily one of the most popular films at the 13th IFFK. It was also probably for the first time at this festival that a director had to be frisked out of an elated crowd for an interview.

“I knew that the film audience in Kerala were discerning and focussed. But I did not know that they would be so powerful and vocal in their response,” said an overwhelmed Mr. Pasolini talking to The Hindu after the screening of the film.

Real life

‘Machan’ is the directorial debut of this acclaimed producer of award winning films like ‘The Full Monty.’ Mr. Pasolini has made a U-turn of sorts from mainstream English language films by making a parallel film set in Asia. Based on a real life incident, ‘Machan’ tells the story of a fake Sri Lankan handball team that illegally turns up in Germany for a tournament and then altogether disappears before the authorities could find out.

“This incident happened in 2004 and I read about this in a newspaper in Australia. At that time, I had just wound up an ambitious film project starring Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe for some reason. And I found this story very interesting, so I decided to make a film on it,” Mr. Pasolini said. He later spent around nine months in Sri Lanka, doing research for the film along with Ruwanthie de Chickera, with whom he wrote the script of the film. He also successfully roped in film-maker Prasanna Vithanage as the producer, who along with Mr. Chickera acted as his “guardian angels.” As he was surrounded by Sri Lankans belonging to various ethnic communities, his unfamiliarity with the country and its milieu did not create much of a concern. Although he did not intend to direct the film initially, he decided for it after falling in love with the script.

Mr. Pasolini spent a considerable amount of time in the costal town of Negambo where he learnt that people from many South Asian countries came to Sri Lanka to flee to European countries by boat. “The reason why we included a set of South Asian immigrants in the handball team in the film is to give a strange connotation. The people were looking for a chance to migrate to European countries purely for economic reasons. And that is the common thread in the film,” he said.

He said that the Western countries wanted free movement for their financial capitals, even while resisting entry of human capital from Third World countries. “I think this differential treatment is really unjust. The fact is that not even a single economy in the West would survive without its immigrant population.”

For a man who started his career in films as a tea-boy in Hollywood, ‘Machan’ has truly been an interesting chapter. The film has already bagged a honours at the Venice Film Festival. “I want to do more such films that are based on real issues. If I could find another story that would be as striking as this, I would definitely make a movie on it,” he said.

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