Guptam

By Pickle November 24, 2024

The Last of them Plagues

India | Malayalam | Drama, Horror, Mystery

Synopsis

‘Guptam’ is about Sethulekshmi, a single mother, and her daughters. In 1999, during a visit to her husband’s distant gravesite, Sethulekshmi’s younger daughter mysteriously disappears. The police find no answers. Thinking her patient waiting would fetch back her daughter, Sethulekshmi relocates to this unfamiliar place with her elder daughter, Neela. The tight-knit, religious community there sees Sethulekshmi as an outsider, an aberration. She is the only working woman in the area, the
only woman who wears churidars, rides a scooter, drives a car, and she barges into male spaces. Obsessed with her search, Sethu’s bond with Neela strains, especially as Neela finds love with a deaf boy at a local school. As strange events plague the town, people accuse ‘the outsiders’, of bringing the wrath of god upon them. The film is a poetic exploration of how Sethulekshmi and Neela negotiate this hostility, grief, and coldness between them. It talks of how love and hope find their way even in the darkest of nights.

Kunjila Mascillamani
Director
kunjilamascillamani@gmail.com

Director(s) Statement

The idea for ‘Guptam’ came to me in my late twenties, when like many women, I had an ‘epiphany’ – that my mother was a remarkably resilient woman and a trailblazer in her own way. I wondered at her superhuman efforts to raise two girls all by herself in a highly moralistic society like Keralam. We see women like her in every part of this country – accidental revolutionaries who had no choice but to fight. We know about strong women like Erin Brockovich, but where are the stories of single mothers like mine or yours? ‘Guptam’ is a tribute to their battles.

Budget
USD 514, 216.71

Financing in place
USD 129, 746.45

Production Company
Mankind Cinemas

Looking for
Co-Producers, Financers, Film Lab/Workshop/Fund