Director Avira Rebecca, who won the State Award for Best Debut Director for Thakarachenda in the year 2007, is teaming up with Sreenivasan for a movie titled 501 Days.
Incidentally, Avira’s debut film Thakarachenda also featured Sreenivasan in the lead role. His next film was Pigman, which had Jayasurya and Ramya Nambessan in the lead roles.
His third film Negalukal, made in 2016, was not released in theatres. It was based on the life of the award-winning farmer Cheruvayal Raman who had stored and preserved 100 varieties of traditional seeds for years. Manoj K Jayan played the protagonist in the film.
Avira’s new film 501 Days is touted to be a social drama that is based on some true-life incidents, we hear. Sunny Wayne, Aju Varghese, Manoj K Jayan, Idavela Babu, Kozhikode Haridas and Mammoottykka are roped in to play important roles in this flick and Sreenivasan will be seen in the central role, as a 60-year-old moopan of a hamlet in Attappadi.
On a Facebook post, Avira wrote that Sreenivasan will be playing the role of a tribal head called Maruthu in Attappadi. “Attappadi land struggle is the theme of the film,” Avira writes. Noted director Kozhikode Haridas will play a role in the film.
In an interview to the Times of India, Avira said that the film is about the fight for land of the tribal people in Attappadi from 1994 to 2018, during which different governments had failed them.
Maruthu in the film goes on to observe a 501 day protest in front of the Secretariat for the land he was promised decades ago, Avira says in the interview.
The shooting of this film is happening in Attapadi. Once done with the shooting in this location, the team will move over to Thiruvanathapuram where they will be camping for two weeks. Sunny Wayne and Aju Varghese will be joining the team during the Thiruvananthapuram schedule, we hear.
On Aju Vaghese’s role, we hear that he will be appearing as the Moopan’s son and Manoj K Jayan will be portraying the role of the panchayat president.
(Content provided by Digital Native)