Film Bazaar: Malaysia's Rajendran brothers rage against oppression and deforestation as part of the 'Depth of Darkness' project

Malaysia's Rajendran brothers, producer Kumanavannan and director Gogularaajan, are angry and have a story tinged with divinity to tell.

Tamil and Malay language project "Depth of Darkness" ("Kaali") comes to Film Bazaar in India's Busan co-production market, where in October it won the Malaysian Development Lab for Fiction Feature Films (mylab) incubator program development award, an initiative supported by the National Film Development Corporation Malaysia (FINAS), the Singapore Film Commission (SFC), Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP), and Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA).

'Depth of Darkness' is set in the 1960s on a remote Malaysian palm oil plantation which borders a dense forest. Kaali, an innocent young wife and plantation worker from the Tamil diaspora community yearns to be a mother but is unable to conceive. This subjects her to oppression from her own society and family. A series of tragic events lead Kaali to realize the divine Mother Goddess within herself and she rises above all evil deeds to protect the innocence of life.

"I started this project as a rebellious act. I wanted to express the helpless anger I I felt when I saw our ancient and diverse rainforest in Malaysia being cut down to make way for monocultural oil palm crops that didn't even belong to this land," Gogularaajan told Variety. He and Kumanavannan co-founded Padai Art Movement, a group that aims to find an original collective narrative for Malaysian Tamil cinema.

"I want to personify the struggle of nature in the character of Kaali. Through her, I want let my audience feel the pain of Mother Nature," Gogularaajan said. "I want us to ask ourselves the question, what led us astray, how did we stray so far from our Mother Nature, and worse , did we grow up wanting to hurt him? I want to invoke the forgotten Mother Goddess within all of us and let her lead us to appreciate life and mercy in this world."

Kumanavannan said, "It's a story that many of us in Malaysia know, even among my peers, but no one has said so yet. We identified that gap and took it upon ourselves to fill it."

In 2021, the project was selected for the Young Filmmakers Workshop in Malaysia where it was mentored by producers Bianca Balbuena and Leonard Tee and won the Next New Wave Support Award. Subsequently, it was at Seapitch, as part of the Bangkok ASEAN Film Festival, where he benefited from the mentorship of festival curators Deepti D'Cunha and Paolo Bertolin. In Busan, the project mentors were Anurag Kashyap, Marten Rabarts and Marie Dubas.

The next step for the Rajendrans is to make a research documentary titled "Plantation Life: As It Was "capturing the essence of plantations in the 1960s, with the support of the Krishen Jit Foundation of Malaysia, and making a short film in the same universe.

Plans are underway to tap into Southeast Asia funding from FINAS, FDCP and SFC, the Busan Asian Film Fund Development Grant and the Hubert Bals Development Fund of Rotterdam. Production could start by 2024.

"Language, proximity and cultural similarity compel us to consider India as a potential partner and we think Film Bazaar is definitely the right place to explore that possibility,” Kumanavannan said.

Gogularaajan added: "We intend to create our own aesthetic/style in cinema without borrowing the cinematic logic of Indian Cinema. We believe that the land of Southeast Asia has its own rhythm, poetry and rhythm. We want to draw our unique voice from this interesting clash of Indian and South Asian sensibilities."