Director Sivaranjini J on ‘Victoria' entering the 2025 Shanghai International Film Festival and more
'There was a phase when I accepted that our movie, Victoria, might not be an entry at any international festival, get a limited release in Kerala, and that would be it for the movie,' says filmmaker Sivaranjini J. However, the director is now thrilled that her debut movie has emerged as the sole entry from India to the Shanghai International Film Festival 2025, on from today till June 22. The film will be screened in the Asian New Talent category.
The film is about Victoria (Meenakshi Jayan), a young beautician from Angamaly in Ernakulam district of Kerala, who is forcibly entrusted a sacrificial rooster as she heads for work. She, however, has other plans. She was plotting to elope with her Hindu boyfriend after her Catholic parents come to know about their relationship. Victoria oscillates between maintaining her composure at work and breaking down owing to her relationship troubles. The rooster's antics at the beauty parlour filled with women adds to the chaos.
The makings of Victoria
'I had this idea when I went to a beauty parlour in my town. There was a rooster at the parlour, intended as an offering by one of the employees to St George Forane Church at Edappally [in Kochi] for the annual church festival. I got a spark for the script here. The image of a rooster in a parlour with only women was interesting,' says Sivaranjini, who is from Manjapra, a few kilometres away from Angamaly. 'A lot of people from our part of the town attend this ritual. People offer a rooster to Saint George, especially when they see snakes in their vicinity seeing it a reminder from the saint,' explains Sivaranjini, pointing to a leitmotif in the movie.
However, Sivaranjini only got around to Victoria's script later; when it was approved by the Kerala State Film Development Corporation (KSFDC) for the Woman Empowerment Grant. 'While it took a year to finish the approval process, I completed the script in two weeks,' says Sivaranjini. The team received funding from KSFDC in 2023 and had its premiere at the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala in 2024, where it won the FIPRESCI award for the best Malayalam film by a debut director.
The film boasts an almost all-female cast, delving into issues including but not limited to gender. 'I wanted new faces who could speak in the Angamaly dialect. I like working with new actors as they would not have been typecast and it is fun to work with them. We found Meenakshi, Sreeshma Chandran, Steeja Mary, and Darsana Vikas through auditions. I had Jolly (Chirayath) chechi in my mind when I was writing the character of the middle-aged woman,' says Sivaranjini.
'Meenakshi worked at a parlour to prepare for her role,' adds the director about the newcomer who has delivered a convincing performance as a cheerful young woman, secretly burdened by her family and partner, seamlessly transitioning between the two moods. She won the Best Performance award at the Independent and Experimental Film Festival of Kerala 2025 for her portrayal.
The change in protagonist's psyche is portrayed through light — its absence and temperature — constantly fluctuating between bright, warm frames and cold, dark frames. 'When you are limited to one space, you can only play around with elements like light. I wanted to show that she is someone who hides her emotions very well and when she is alone, she shows her true self.' Set in the women-dominated space of a beauty parlour, women are portrayed as being free.
Existing disparities
Victoria also raises questions about caste and class disparities still prevalent in society. 'I wanted to address caste because we live in a society where this exists and I couldn't avoid it from the scope of the film. It was inspired by the experiences of my friends who are in interfaith marriages. The first question others ask them is 'What is your partner's caste?''
Myths and faiths
What did the rooster with its legs tied represent? The director says, 'For me, it is a spiritual presence. The central figure has a spiritual moment in the beginning when she touches the rooster for the first time. You also see her pick up a card from a box of Bible verses. On that day, the rooster becomes a source of spiritual support which helps her get through that day, to get out of the central conflict in the movie.'
The 33-year-old says that since she had to correctly represent the myth about the saint and the ritual, visuals from the real festival have been used. 'It is like a found footage sequence. It was a document about an event which couldn't be replaced. People may be familiar with sacrificing roosters in a Hindu context, but a lot of people are not aware of it in the Christian context. I wanted them to see that,' she says.
The beginnings
Sivaranjini, an engineering graduate, developed an affinity towards movies as a child. 'My father was part of a film society in Angamaly, and I used to watch a lot of films early on. However, after Class 12, I could not convince my parents to let me join a visual communication or mass communication course.' She studied film and video communication at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, and made two short films, Ritham (2016) and Kalyani (2014). She joined the PhD programme at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, after a two-year stint as an editor.
'When I began, I wanted to bring in the people I have known for years to my crew. All of them were my friends for years — my DOP (Anand Ravi), music director (Abhaydev Praful), people handling the sound and so on. I wanted it to be their debut as well,' says Sivaranjini.
Currently, in a rush to finish her doctoral thesis, Sivaranjini says, 'As a filmmaker, I want to work with the movie medium and its form and as a woman, I want to continue to make movies with a lot of women in them, to present them in roles we have never seen them in.'
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