Kunchacko Boban, Mahesh Narayanan on Locarno Competition Title ‘Ariyippu’ (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Naman Ramachandran Acclaimed filmmaker Mahesh Narayanan and popular actor-producer Kunchacko Boban are re-teaming for “Ariyippu” (“Declaration”), the first Indian film in Locarno’s international competition in 17 years.The Malayalam-language film follows Hareesh (Boban) and Reshmi (Divya Prabha), an immigrant couple from Kerala working in a medical gloves factory near Delhi, who aspire to go abroad for a better life.

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, when an old video resurfaces among the factory workers, it opens up a Pandora’s box that threatens the couple’s jobs and marriage.Narayanan got the germ of the film’s idea from a newspaper article about a female bank employee who had approached the Mumbai high court demanding a “declaration” clarifying that a video which had been circulated in her bank was a look alike and not her.

That idea travelled with Narayanan for a while until he hit upon the premise about a migrant couple working in a gloves factory.

This is Narayanan’s fourth film as director and though seemingly thematically different from each other, they are always based on personal struggle.“Even though ‘Take Off’ was viewed as a rescue/survival drama, the story has other layers to it.