When ants ‘starred’ in a Malayalam film

Rajeesh Pothavoor’s short film involved watching anthills and their inhabitants

Kumaran and Malu are the two main characters in Rajeesh R Pothavoor’s short film about how Kumaran, the father, goes about organising daughter Malu’s wedding and what transpires thereafter. Only that Kumaran and Malu are two ginger ants, as are the other ‘actors’ in Life of Ants, a 10-minute short film.

And no, this is not Antz. Unlike the 1998 animated film, this one features real, living ants.

Sans visual effects such as graphics or CGI, the action in this film revolves around ants. The idea came to Rajeesh when he filmed two ants on his mobile phone. “I first filmed the ants on the sets of Kunjeldho. I was on my break when I saw two ants — one was lugging something and the other was trying to help and that struck a chord in me, setting me thinking,” he says. By the time he got home that day, he just couldn’t let go of the idea of making a film around ants. “I had to make a film with a story, like one with human beings, not the documentary type.”

He wrote the story, the screenplay and dialogues. “I paid attention even to the continuity of scenes, like in a regular film. I have made no compromises on the quality,” says Rajeesh, who has the experience of having made a few short films and music albums. The dialogues have been dubbed by artistes who are part of a Facebook and WhatsApp community started by him, ‘Cinema Gramam’ — a platform for acting enthusiasts looking for a break in films. For Rajeesh, a make-up artiste, getting into films and being part of the industry has been a dream. At 20, he started his career as make-up man, “This way, I could be part of something I am very fond of,” he says over phone from Kasaragod. The 30-year-old has been a make-up man for actors such as Manoj K Jayan and Babu Antony, besides some television actors.

The making of the film took three days, but filming ants took time. “I have gone looking for anthills and waited outside them for the perfect shot that would go with the storyline,” he says. The film was shot entirely on his mobile phone. Rajeesh wants to send the film as an entry for film festivals and therefore has not uploaded it on YouTube; it has, however, has been uploaded on actors Tini Tom, Priyanka Nair and Anaswara Rajan’s Facebook pages.

The villain in the film is man. “I wanted to send out a message as well, that the world belongs to all creatures. In the end, one of the ‘characters’ — an ant — asks man why he thinks that the earth belongs to only him, and says that it belongs to all creatures on it.” He assures that not a single ant was killed in the making of the film. Rajeesh says, “In fact, for those scenes that required dead ‘bodies’, I used dead ants. There is even a disclaimer that ‘no ants were harmed in the making of this film’.”