Malayalam director Lal Jose is back with a family drama
The Hindu
Soubin Shahir and Mamta Mohandas come together for the first time in ‘Meow’
Lal Jose doesn’t hold back when he reveals the plotline of his latest film Meow, which hits screens on December 24. It is refreshingly different from most other filmmakers today, afraid of giving away too much. He is as frank about why the team chose a theatre release, “OTT platforms prefer a particular kind of film, actors and pay accordingly, we didn’t think we meet the criteria… frankly, for these reasons we didn’t pursue that course of action,” he confesses.
Meow has been written by Dr Iqbal Kuttipuram, his collaborator on three films - Arabikadha, Diamond Necklace, and Vikramadithyan. Like Arabikadha and Diamond Necklace, this film too is located in West Asia. “Iqbal is based there, so his stories are also located there. These are people he meets during the course of his practice as a homoeopath. He is empathetic and they end up telling him about their lives, these are lives he has seen closely,” says Jose. The kernel of the films lies in these real-life stories.
The film is a ‘family drama’, a genre of cinema not seen much in Malayalam.