27 March,2011 07:48 AM IST | | Aviva Dharmaraj
Chennai-born director MJ Ramanan is hopeful that his 10-minute short film on female infanticide, Miss You Mama, will make it to the Cannes Film Festival 2011 in May.
The film, shot earlier this month had a 62-member crewu00a0-- most of whom offered their services for freeu00a0-- working round the clock to complete it.
"We started at six in the morning on March 5 and wrapped up by seven the next morning," says Ramanan over the phone from Chennai.
The project, however, has been 15 years in the making. "I first thought of the concept in 1996 when Jayalalithaa set up booths to leave new-born girl children," says Ramanan, referring to the scheme set up in the early '90s by the then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister in an effort to stem female infanticide.
The film has the "rejected soul" return to the mother to understand what caused the separation. "There's no dialogue, just a child's voice-over," explains Ramanan, who plans to dub the short in other Indian languages.
The writer-director, referred to as "Hollywood Ramanan" among foreign film crews, says he hopes that the film's message will stress the need to give the girl child a chance. "Just as women, including Indira Gandhi, Hillary Clinton and Kalpana Chawla were given a chance".
The theme struck a chord with actor Rahul Raj Singh of Mata Ki Chowki fame, who plays the father in the film. "Meri aankhen bhar aayi (my eyes welled with tears)," says Singh about his reaction after watching the film.
