Ayynoorum Ayynthum (500 & 5) – Tamil independent film

One of the more recent unconventional attempts coming out from Tamil Cinema is a new film called Ayynoorum Ayynthum (500 & 5) which was recently screened at the 10th annual Indian film Festival in Stuggart, Germany.

Created by Accessible Horizon Films, Ayynoorum Ayynthum (500 & 5) is the brainchild of 4 young filmmakers, Dass, Raghu, Kaushalya and Ramesh. With a collective background in Architecture, Television, Arts and Engineering in the US, the team of 4 have come out with a radically experimental film that follows the journey of a 500 Rupee note that travels through 5 main characters.

The movie in 5 parts: The first, Adiyaalukku Podiyaal (The Goon’s Stooge), follows a superstitious lackey who wants to become a gang leader. The second, Mr. Adi, is on a top-rated film director Adi, desperate to win back his wife but the silence between them is too large to fill, despite their own feelings. The third, Number Sollunga (Number Please), is on Sundari, a no-nonsense young woman who works in a phone recharge shop who wants is to safeguard the souvenir her lover gave her. The fourth, Jenny’s Shadow, is on a girl  whose tight-rope walk between psychedelic reality and nightmarish fantasy lands her in a self-destructive vortex. The fifth, Agni Kunjondru Kandaen  (I found a spark of fire), is on a nameless, avant-garde revolutionary who ignites a moneyless rebellion to raze down the capitalistic juggernaut.

International acclaim : Recently the film had been selected at 2 International Film Festivals –  the Stuttgart Indian Film Festival in Germany and the International Film Festival of Kerala. The movie opened to critical acclaim by international audiences in both the Festivals and has been the only Tamil film to be selected in the Feature-film category. Written and directed by Raghu J and created by Dass, Ramesh and Kaushalya, the film is their debut attempt in feature-length narrative filmmaking. Prior to this, their filmography includes documentary films and short films that have been screened at various international film festivals around the world.

Cast and Crew: With cinematography by Mohandass R, the film’s  music is by Sivapragasam. The key cast comprises Deepak Sundarrajan, Sivashankar Srinivasan, Living Smile Vidya, Chinnu Kuruvilla and T. M. Karthik Srinivasan. Many of the cast members are actors from a theater background based in Chennai. Some of them have also done lead and secondary roles in various Tamil and international films. T. M. Karthik Srinivasan, a theater actor based in Chennai, who’s been performing plays in English can also be seen in a cameo in the Hollywood blockbuster Life of Pi.

Now that Ayynoorum Ayynthum (500 & 5) has been received well internationally, it is yet to be seen how the Tamil audience takes it.