Coimbatore filmmaker ropes in world’s shortest woman

When Coimbatore-based short filmmaker Ajith Ashok got upset with the endless rape incidents in the country, he decided to address the issue in a short film. Thus was born Maatharam, a short film that appeals for death penalty for the perpetrators. Ajith, who already has two short films in his kitty — Bhoo and Kaara (in which he introduced Sai Pallavi’s sister, Pooja Kannan) — has now roped in the world’s shortest woman, Nagpur-based Jyoti Kisange Amge, for his third film.Elaborating on the film, Ajith says, “Rape is a burning issue in the country and it needs to be addressed at the earliest. The film has also focused on certain difficulties that women face in their daily lives. After we zeroed in on the script, we thought no one could portray this role better than the world’s shortest woman herself. Jyoti was apt for the role. She is cast as the mother of two children. Since she cannot become a mother herself, she decides to adopt two girl children and raises them. Later, she faces a gruesome incident in her life, which leads to a major twist in the plot.”Jyoti, who worked on her first Tamil film, says that though she didn’t understand a word of Tamil, she enjoyed shooting for the film. She says, “The director of the film and his team had found me on the internet and approached me to play the lead. When they narrated the script, I liked it as the film revolves around different issues that women face in their day-to-day lives. It was a tad difficult to work on the dialogues. The toughest part, however, was to act in the emotional scenes. I am a happy-go-lucky person, and to portray a serious role was not easy for me. I had to really control my emotions.” But at the same time, facing the camera was not so hard for the youngster. “Since I have done quite a few shows earlier, I was not nervous at all,” adds Jyoti.Talking about the experience of working with the world’s shortest woman, Ajith says, “When we first went to Nagpur to tell the story, Jyoti wasn’t sure about doing the film. Later, she gave her nod. She became so emotional during the shoot that she had tears in her eyes. There is a dialogue in the film, ‘I am not worried that I am short. I am worried that I am a woman’, which pretty much reveals a lot about the crux of the story. Since she didn’t understand Tamil, we had to work with a translator. We shot the film in Coimbatore.” The three-minute short film will be telecast around June end.