​Malayalam director wins Gollapudi Srinivas Award

CHENNAI: “ID” is a story of displacement that’s found its maker right on top. Debutant filmmaker Kamal K M has been named the winner of the 16th Gollapudi Srinivas National Award, which will be presented on August 12.
The award is presented to a debutant Indian filmmaker in memory of director Gollapudi Srinivas, who died at the age of 25, on August 12, 1992.He was hit by a tidal wave while shooting his first film “Prema Pustakam” in Telugu. The movie was later finished by his father Gollapudi Maruthi Rao.
This year’s winner Kamal is a former journalist, who worked as co-screenwriter and assistant director for director Santosh Sivan on the films “Anandabhadram”, “Before the Rains” and “Prarambha”. He also directed short films that have been showcased in film festivals around the world.
Kamal’s movie “ID” is based on a labourer, who suddenly collapses in the midst of his work at a woman’s house. The man has no form of identification on him and the woman decides to find out who he is.
It was produced by Collective Phase One, a production house formed by a group of independent filmmakers in Kerala to make movies that the mainstream industry would hesitate to support. “The film has begun doing the rounds of international film festivals,” says cinematographer Madhu Neelakandan, also part of Collective Phase One. Kamal is now in France showing the film.
“It was a unanimous decision to select the movie,” says Balu Mahendra, one of the jury members. “What caught our attention was the fact that “ID” was differently told, almost like a thriller,” he says. “It caught us off guard,” says Khushboo, another jury member.
On his website, the 36-year-old director says that when he started writing “ID”, he left one part of the story unwritten because he believed the process would reveal it to him. And it looks like he was right.