A psychological drama about a nurse and her patient

Actor

VIS Jayapalan

will be playing the central role in

Nalinakanthi

, an upcoming film directed by debutant

Ponn Suhir

. The National Award-winning actor will be seen in the role of a surgeon who suffers from a dementia-like mental illness. “The protagonist in the story is a nurse who comes to take care of this physician. The struggle of the nurse in taking care of him and what she encounters in the society is the story of the film,” begins Suhir, who has learnt filmmaking at the prestigious New York University’s Tisch School Of The Arts. “Martin Scorsese was our head of the department at that time, in 1992,” he adds. But Suhir had to put aside his filmmaking dream for a while due to “issues at home”. After 2009, he started making films in English and has made four films, including On Path To Liberation and Proscenium, in the US till date.

He decided to make this story in Tamil as he has always wanted to make a Tamil film. He calls this film a psychological drama and says he went for strong performers rather than stars while casting for this film. “That is why I chose

Puvisha Manoharan

, who acted as Deepika Padukone’s cousin in Chennai Express, to play the role of the nurse. I auditioned many actresses for this role, including well-known names, but they weren’t able to emote as required,” he explains and adds that this is also why he went with Jayapalan. Actress Kasthuri will be seen as an old patient of the surgeon. The technical team includes composer Jude Arohanam, a musician from Pondicherry, and cinematographer Prabhu, an assistant of Velu Prabhakaran.