“There was a phase when I admitted that our film, VictoriaNo international festival can have an entry, get a limited release in Kerala, and it will be for the film, ”filmmaker Shivranjini J. says, directors are now thrilled that their first film has emerged as the only entry from India from India to 2025, from today onwards, the film will be screened from today to 22 June.
The film is about Victoria (Meenakshi Jayan), a young beautician from Angamali in Ernakulam district of Kerala, who is forcibly assigned a sacrifice cock as she is prominent for work. However, he has other plans. She was plotting allops with her Hindu lover after knowing her Catholic parents about their relationship. Victoria pulls up the work between maintaining his creation at work and breaking up due to the troubles of his relationship. In a beauty parlor filled with women, the activities of cock increase chaos.
Victoria Making
“I was idea when I went to a beauty parlor in my city. The parlor had a cock, which was aimed at a gift by one of the employees for St. George Foren Church in Edplli. [in Kochi] For the annual church festival. I found a spark for the script here. The image of a cock in a parlor with only women was interesting, “Sivaranjini says, which is from Manjapara, which is a few kilometers from Angamali.” Many people from our part of the city participate in this ritual. People provide a rooster to St. George, especially when they look at snakes in their surrounding area, looking at a reminder from the saint, ”Shivranjini said in the film pointing to a lamotiff.
Shivranjini J | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
However, Shivranjini only got around VictoriaLater script; When it was approved by the Kerala State Film Development Corporation (KSFDC) for women empowerment grants. “While it took a year to complete the approval process, I completed the script in two weeks,” says Shivranjini. The team received funding from KSFDC in 2023 and premiered at the 29th International Film Festival in Kerala in 2024, where it won the FIPRESCI Award for the Best Malayalam film by a debut director.
The film claims almost all-women actors, which is not limited to gender. “I wanted new faces who could talk in Angmali dialect. Chechi In my mind when I was writing the character of a middle -aged woman, ”says Shivranjini.
A still Victoria
Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
“Meenakshi worked in a parlor to prepare for her role,” the director said of the newcomer who has given a solid performance as a cheerful young woman, secretly cramped by her family and partner, infection between both moods. He won the Best Performance Award at the Independent and Experimental Film Festival of Kerala 2025 for his portrayal.
Meenakshi Jayan Victoria
Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The change in the psyche of the hero is painted through light – its absence and temperature – continuously bright, hot frames and cold, ups and downs between black frames. “When you are limited to a place, you can only play with elements like light. I wanted to show that he is someone who hides his feelings very well and when she is alone, she shows her true self.” Set in a female-cruel place of a beauty parlor, women are depicted as being free.
Existing inequalities
Victoria At the same time, raise questions about caste and class inequalities which are still prevalent in society. “I wanted to address the caste because we live in a society where it is present and I could not escape the scope of the film. It was inspired by the experiences of my friends who are in the interfath marriage.
Myth and belief
What did cock represents with their feet? The director says, “For me, this is a spiritual appearance. There is a spiritual moment at the beginning of the central figure when it touches the cock for the first time. You also take a card from a box of Bible verses. On that day, the roster becomes a source of spiritual support that helps to get it through the day, which helps to get out of the central conflict in the film.”
Filmmaker Shivranjini J | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The 33 -year -old says that since he was to correctly represent the myth about the saint and the ritual, the real festival scenes have been used. “It is like a found footage sequence. It was a document about an event that could not be replaced. People could be familiar with sacrificing Rosters in a Hindu context, but many people do not know about it in Christian context. I wanted to see them,” she says.
beginning
An engineering graduate Shivranjini developed an intimacy towards films as a child. “My father was part of a film society in Angamali, and I used to watch a lot of films. However, after class 12, I could not refuse my parents to join a visual communication or mass communication course.” He studied film and video communication at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, and made two short films, Ritham (2016) and Kalyani (2014). She attended the PhD program at the Indian Technology Institute of Technology Bombay after a two -year tenure as an editor.
“When I started, I wanted to bring people whom I had known for my crew for years. All these were my friends for years – my DOP (Anand Ravi), music director (Abhayadeva Praful), people handling sound and so on. I wanted it to be their start.”
Currently, in a crowd to eliminate my doctoral thesis, Shivranjini says, “As a filmmaker, I want to work with the film medium and her form and as a woman, I want to continue making films with a lot of women in them, to present them in the roles we have never seen.”
Published – June 13, 2025 03:35 pm IST
