Baffling life of runaways lifts Oscar-winning sound designer Resul Pookutty into the role of director

Award-winning sound designer Resul Pookutty (left) is directing his first feature film, 'Otta (The Loner)', in Malayalam.

Growing up in Kerala's Kollam district in the early '80s, Resul Pookutty would walk with his friends every day to their school, 6 km away. In the morning, he told the story of a movie to one set of friends and repeated it on the way back to another. When he ran out of cinema tales, he would invent more. Decades later, Pookutty, who won an Oscar for Best Sound Mixing for Slumdog Millionaire in 2009, is now ready to reinvent himself, this time as a director.

Otta (The Loner), Pookutty's first feature film as a director, will begin shooting in October. "We did a small shooting schedule in April," says Pookutty about the film that will be shot in India and abroad. The story of the film takes place in Palakkad, Kerala, Chennai, Mumbai and Dubai. The film has an ensemble cast with such big names as Shobana, Divya Dutta and Adil Hussain along with South Indian stars Sathyaraj, Rohini, Asif Ali and Arjun Ashokan.

"It's a big film," beams Pookutty, hinting at the scale of production of his debut directorial venture in Malayalam. Finnish musician Tuomas Kantelinen (The Legend of Hercules, The Italian Key) is the music composer, with award-winning Malayalam poet-lyricist Rafeeq Ahamed writing the songs. The cinematographer is Pookutty's Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, classmate Arun Varma and the editor, Zian Sreekanth (Hotel California). Biju Dhanapalan (Lage Raho Munnabhai, Johnny Gaddaar) leads visual effects and Pookutty retains the sound department.

Otta tells the story of runaways and what forces people, mostly the young, to abandon their homes for an uncertain future. The film is built on the life of Hari, a runaway born to rich parents in Palakkad. He has a close friend in Chennai, Raju, to confide in. Then there is Hari's alter ego, Ben. "It is a story of these three characters," says Pookutty. "The audience witnesses the lives of the three characters."

The story, which Pookutty wrote during the first lockdown in early 2020, was born from a chance meeting he had with a Kerala-born entrepreneur in Mumbai. "Three years ago, I was invited to an event in Mumbai meant for reuniting runaway children with their families. I saw burqa-clad mothers from Lucknow taking their children back home. Hariharan S., the entrepreneur from Kerala who organised the event, gave me a book (Runaway Children) authored by him. It was about his life as a runaway," recalls Pookutty.

The film's main character, Hari, is based on Hariharan, who runs a charity for runaways called Children Reunited in Mumbai. Hariharan had run away from home thrice - when he was 8, 12, and later 20 years old. While he returned home on his own twice, his father, a professional banker, found him in a lodge in his last attempt. Back home, Hariharan completed college and went on to launch a successful BPO company. Pookutty says: "When I asked Hariharan why he ran away from home three times, he said, 'I wanted freedom'."

The screenplay of Otta is written by Kiron Prabhakar, the director's friend who wrote and directed the 2019 Malayalam film Thakkol, starring Nedumudi Venu and Murali Gopi. "Kiran wrote the basic screenplay and I collaborated with him to rewrite the final script after a series of interactions with Hariharan who inspired the story of the film. I thought his (Hariharan's) approval was important for the production," says the director.

Pookutty, who was already a law graduate when he joined FTII to study sound recording and sound design (he graduated in 1995), says the campus life at the institute in Pune inspired him to become a filmmaker. "Sound design was only one reason for joining the institute," he says. "Every FTII student nurtures a dream. They want to die as a filmmaker, even if as a bad one. I always thought I would make a film and win an Oscar. I never thought it would be an Oscar for technical work."

Pookutty says he wants to continue directing films in the future. He has already started writing the story for another film, which he says will be "chapters of my life". "That is for another time," he adds. "I like drama, pure drama. My aim as a filmmaker is to help audiences witness the visual narrative, not to make them involved in the film. Making them involved is emotional blackmail. But if you allow them to witness it, that experience is transformative."

He remains nostalgic about celluloid, but is determined to go for a digital production for Otta. "At the film school, I studied everything about celluloid. We picked up the film, which had the smell of a hospital or the dettol smell. We saw images forming inside a chemical and we felt it," Pookutty reminisces. "We don't have the same feeling today because there is no tactile image formation when you are using a digital camera."

Otta is produced by Resul Pookutty Productions and Hariharan's Children Re.united LLP. The production team is aiming at the international film festival circuit next year, starting with the Cannes festival in May and then Toronto in September before a theatrical release in the same month.

Resul Pookutty at the Oscars awards ceremony.