Director Sanal Kumar Sasidharan releases ‘Vazhakku’ online after spat with Tovino Thomas

Vazhakku also stars Kani Kusruti, Sudev Nair, and Azees Nedumangad

The controversy surrounding the Malayalam film Vazhakku has taken a dramatic turn. The film’s director Sanal Kumar Sasidharan has released the Tovino Thomas starrer online for it to be caught for free.

The issue started about five days ago when Sanal took to his Facebook to write a long post in which he accused Tovino of meddling with the film’s release, both on OTT and theatrically, over concerns that it would affect his career. He pointed out that the film was shot in 2020 and was ready to release in 2021 but because of Tovino, it was hindered..

Responding to this, Tovino, along with Sanal’s cousin and co-producer of Vazhakku, Girish Chandran, hosted an Instagram live video where he said it was Sanal who interfered in the film’s release. Apart from mentioning how his idea of sending the film to the Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI) was shot down by the director fearing that it would be leaked online, Tovino also stated that he has invested ₹27 lakh in the film’s production without any returns which he did out of respect for the director.

The filmmaker countered Tovino’s claims by uploading the entire film on Vimeo and shared the link on his Facebook which he captioned saying, “Cinema should be viewed by the audience. For anyone who wants to watch it, here is Vazhakku (The Quarrel). You will understand now why the movie hasn’t been released.”

The film has now been taken down from the video-sharing website. Vazhakku also stars Kani Kusruti, Sudev Nair, and Azees Nedumangad.