Sarath Appani wrote Chaaram based on a true incident

An actor in a nascent stage of his career might have to wait for a long time for strong performance-driven characters. Sarath Appani decided to take matters into his own hands and script his own film. His recently announced

Chaaram

is a story that is based on an incident that he witnessed in his youth.

“I had to present a story as part of an improvisation routine that I had to do as a drama student,” says the

Angamaly Diaries

actor. “I remember this guy from my younger days and developed his character and an incident from his life, which I had seen first-hand. It is an emotional story and got a lot of appreciation when I presented it.”

The actor says he was always keen to develop the story into a

screenplay

, but after things got moving in films, the idea got sidelined. He decided to write it now because he felt the “wait for a strong character can be frustrating”. “So far, there have been only a couple of characters, including Appani Ravi from Angamaly Diaries, with which I have been able to establish a rapport (with the audience), so I thought it was time that I wrote my own character,” says Sarath.

While writing, he discussed the story with cameraman friend Nithin, and they had the frames and shots planned by the time the script was done. “I first narrated the story to director Jomy Joseph. He was interested and said we should start work on the film immediately,” says Sarath, who is also excited to start work on a Tamil film, helmed by AR Murgadoss’ assistant Abin Hariharan,.