Naman Ramachandran The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is informing film and television works around the world and Malayalam-language film “Hawk’s Muffin” (“Prappeda”) – selected in this week’s International Film Festival Rotterdam – uses it as a starting point, and adds elements of war to tell a surreal tale set in a dystopian future.After his plane drops an atomic bomb, a pilot is ordered into hiding by his commanders.
The location is an isolated estate where his life intertwines with his daughter, granddaughter, a bodyguard, a priest and a policeman.
Things get complicated when the granddaughter befriends a stranger.“Hawk’s Muffin” is the feature debut of Krishnendu Kalesh, known for his 2017 short satirical noir thriller “Black Beast” (“Karinchathan”), a response to the Charlie Hebdo attack. “The pandemic is used only as an opportunity to start off a story of century-long conspiracy in the film.
I conceived the pandemic period as an occasion for a higher nexus to control people and their movement, and implement their strategies,” Kalesh tells Variety about “Hawk’s Muffin.” “Statistically also, now after two years of pandemic, you can analyze that the rich become richer faster.
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