Telling stories with a difference

Last year, film director Shalini Balasundaram (pic) made Malaysia proud when she won the Best Screenplay award at the Norway Tamil Film Festival Awards 2020 for her crime thriller Pulanaivu.

This year, she took on a new challenge in directing the 22-episode television series Mente.

“The series has elements of both crime and sci-fi,” said the 27-year-old director who co-wrote the script with her husband, Sathish Natarajan.

The story centres on Sanjay, whose life turns upside down when his wife goes missing. He is determined to search for his wife, and finds that there is an element of conspiracy to her disappearance.

The cast of Mente comprises C. Kumaresan, Datin Sri Shaila and V. Shamvanan. The series is currently playing on Astro Vinmeen HD.

“I am a big fan of Christopher Nolan. What I like best about his sci-fi movies like Inception and Tenet is that they are full of emotions. He loves to explore relationships in his sci-fi movies,” said Shalini.

Tamil speaking audiences prefer to see a family drama when it comes to television series. As such, one wonders if a sci-fi series like Mente will click with the audience?

“I am fully aware of what the audience likes and dislikes,” said Shalini.

“My series is not a total experiment. There are still family elements in it.”

Shalini said that the last thing she wants is to drive away her audience, adding that audiences today are more exposed to different elements after watching programmes on streaming services like Netflix and Amazon.

Speaking on another project she is excited about, Shalini said she recently directed a suspense thriller-horror telemovie called Sara, in which she plays the role of a babysitter called Mitra who has to care for a child called Sara who is able to communicate with the souls of the dead.

Things get a little tense when the souls tell Sara that Mitra’s life is in danger.

Shalini is full of praise for eight-year-old Devyanna, who plays Sara in the telemovie.

“She is very talented. I believe she will have a
bright future in the film industry.”

On her working relationship with her husband, Shalini said he is the cinematographer for all her productions.

“We worked with each other even before we got married four years
ago. Of course, we will have different opinions when it comes to work. But we never let that affect our personal relationship,” she said.