Inayathalam Producer-Director Shankar On The Film & Real-Life Inspirations Behind It

In a chat with Only Kollywood, producer-turned-director Shankar who is making his directorial debut with the cyber crime thriller Inayathalam talks about the plot, his passion for films and inspirations.

“This is my second movie. Our first production under our banner Anugrahada Art Films was Thunai Mudhalvar. Now, I have directed and produced Inayathalam with my friend Suresh,” Shankar says. 

“Due to sheer passion, I’ve been planning to make a movie for a long time. For the past twenty years, my close friend Suresh, who has jointly directed the film with me, and I have been thinking about directing a movie. We have been waiting for the right time. Even before the advent of digital technologies, we made some eight short films with different storylines. We didn’t have access to the industry like we have now. Inayathalam is its outcome. It’s a cyber crime thriller,” he adds. 

Shankar and Suresh prepared the script of Inayathalam for over a year and decided that it should be contemporary to connect with young audiences.

“We wanted our movie to be utterly contemporary and pondered about the core plot. Then we landed on the premise: social media obsession. Our screenplay is entirely different from ‘Lens.’ We didn’t know that a film like Lens is coming. We finished our script long time back. In fact, I gave my entire team the bounded script before we went on floors itself,” says Shankar who is juggling between his own profession and film industry. 

“Ganesh Venkataraman plays an investigative officer in the movie. But, he will not be seen performing action sequences. It’s not an action-based film. But, a real thriller which revolves around an investigation. Coimbatore-based ace writer Marabin Maindhan Muthaiah has written the dialogues for the film. I finished the story and screenplay and gave it to him to pen the dialogues since I couldn’t get enough time.”