Tara Ramanujan’s debut directorial Nishiddho (Forbidden) may have been judged the second best feature film at the 52nd Kerala State Film Awards and the best feature film at the Ottawa India Film Festival (OIFFES), but she confesses to thinking about how differently she could have done certain things. “People who were part of the film constantly tell me that the film is done and to stop thinking like this. But I still do it sometimes,” says Tara, laughing.
Nishiddho is a multi-layered film about two migrants - Chaavi and Rudra - from Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, respectively. The film explores the tenuous - not so much romantic - relationship between the two in the backdrop of Kochi. “They are both fish out of water, they don’t speak the same language, yet they manage to communicate with each other. Chaavi is Malayali-Tamil, but she is out of place here and Rudra, an idol maker-turned-construction worker from West Bengal, is an outsider. Their point of view is the same, yet different,” explains Tara over the phone from Thiruvananthapuram.
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