Parallel Lines, an independent Tamil feature film, is all set to premiere at Canada’s south Asian film festival, the Mosaic International South Asian Film Festival (MISAFF), this year. The film will have its world premiere in the festival’s eighth edition, which is being held online due to COVID-19 pandemic this year.
Parallel Lines is written, directed, edited, and produced by Kiran R, who had assisted filmmaker Mani Ratnam in Kaatru Veliyidai, in addition to directing his own short films. The film stars theatre artists Vatsan M Natarajan and Masanth Natarajan, from the Koothu-P-Pattarai theatre group.
The film’s official poster was shared by Mani Ratnam’s Madras Talkies in September this year. Touted to be a thriller, this film was shot in just 25 days before the pandemic-induced lockdown.
With a very small film crew of seven members, the team went about filming Parallel Lines in and around Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, using the guerrilla filmmaking technique. Sundar Ram Krishnan has done the cinematography for Parallel Lines and its background score has been composed by Santhan Anebajagane.
Parallel Lines is the story of two men who befriend each other on Facebook, meeting in real life for the first time. They share two things in common — their name and their opinion towards injustice in crimes against women — and the film is about the events that transpire when they first meet.
All films premiering at the festival are available to watch in Canada, for a period of 24 hours from the time the viewer hits play. The festival that begins on December 4, Thursday, will go up to December 12, and has an interesting line-up of films. Director Arun Karthik’s Nasir, too, is part of the line-up this year.
Other films that will premiere at MISAFF this year include Sonia Cole’s I am you, Amartya Bhattacaryya’s Ketu, Judy Naidoo’s Kings of Mulberry Street, Andrew Chung’s White Elephant, Roshni Sengupta and Aniket Dutta’s Ghost of the Golden Groves, Sarmad Khoosat’s Zindagi Tamasha and Deepti Gupta’s Shut Up Sona, among others.
Deepa Mehta’s Funny Boy is the opening film of the MISAFF this year, which will be broadcast on CBC television on December 4. Pakistan’s entry into the Oscar race, Zindagi Tamasha, will premiere for a period of 12 hours on December 12; this film will be the closing film of the festival.