Sthanarthi Sreekuttan: How a Malayalam film by four friends sparked social change in the country

In the recent film Sthanarthi Sreekuttan, there is a scene involving two groups of children. When one of them hits another for throwing a duster at him, the victim summons his ‘god fathers’—three whipper-snappers who call themselves the ‘bhasmam team’. The bhasmam (ash) team enters in slow motion, with hip-hop thumping in the background. The leader, a diminutive boy with expressive eyes, flicks his bangs back as he growls condescendingly: “You’re lucky we have a cricket match now or else.... Now, go back to your classroom.” The belief among the children is that when the bhasmam team smears ash on their forehead, there is going to be a fight that day.

 

The entry scene of the young ‘gangsters’ is a spectacle modelled after a mass-action thriller like KGF or Baahubali, which could have signalled the entry of a larger-than-life hero like Yash or Prabhas. The fact that it is three chits who enact the scene lends it a humour that is heightened by the seriousness with which the children play the role. This cinematic treatment is at the core of how the story is told, a deliberate subversion of reality rarely seen in a movie by children, but for adults. It was a risky gamble, but one that debut filmmaker Vinesh Viswanath pulls off beautifully.

 

But the real triumph of Sthanarthi Sreekuttan is not that it fulfils its mission of being a ‘mass movie’ featuring children—that is only the means to the end—but that it touches your primal urge to root for the underdog, in this case Sreekuttan who, along with his three friends, is a perennial backbencher. The son of an autorickshaw driver, Sreekuttan is the constant target of a heartless teacher, Chakrapani or CP, until in an act of rebellion he announces that he is going to stand in the election for class president against Ambady, a front-bencher and CP’s pet.

 

Much like the four friends in the film are its writers—Kailash S. Bhavan, Murali Krishnan, Anand Manmadhan and Vinesh. They say they hit a “geographical lottery” because they all live near each other in Thiruvananthapuram, so they rented a room and starting brainstorming ideas. Initially, more friends were involved but finally, when it came to fine-tuning the story, it whittled down to the four of them. They say their intention was to make an entertainer and the subtext of caste and politics came organically.

 

“The brief we gave the music director, for example, was to make music like the background scores of [Telugu superstar] Balayya’s films. We wanted it to be vibrant, and the energy should reach even those sitting at the back of the theatre,” says Kailash, who also edited the film. “We had to figure out how to achieve that effect using children. At one point, Malayalam films went for a very realistic treatment. We wanted to break that consciously. Our aim was to achieve a comic book effect, whether through the colour palette or shot design.”

 

One thing that unites the friends, who met through social media, is their love for cinema. There are plenty of film references in Sthanarthi Sreekuttan because that’s how they talk among themselves, they say. “Whether we are pulling each other’s legs or ribbing a late-comer, we’ll always have a cinema reference in hand. Cinema is the nucleus, not just of our movies, but also of our lives,” says Kailash. According to Vinesh, even though he’s the director of this film, in this “eco-system” of theirs, tomorrow it might be Kailash or Murali who makes the film, and the others will staunchly stand by him. “We are certain of one thing: that it should be the project and not the person that should be at the centre,” he says. This does not mean there are no disagreements. The only time they were all in agreement was the first day, when they decided they should make the film, jokes Murali. Since then, there was healthy debate and discussion about each sub-plot and dialogue. But no matter the disagreement they always prioritised the good of the film above everything else.

 

Not everyone, however, got the film’s concept. Because of the novel approach and the lack of big stars, they were rejected by 16 producers before Budget Lab, a film production company in Kochi, agreed to take them on. They were allotted a budget of Rs2 crore and 40 days to make the film. For 28 days, they would get 32 children daily. With these constraints they decided to shoot four scenes a day. They also chose a risky approach of designing the film for one camera. This meant that they had to do a detailed storyboard because they did not have the option of shooting from different angles and choosing the shots they wanted in the final edit. In a painstaking process, Vinesh sat with the cinematographer and designed each shot using a specific software, moving around stick figures to achieve the desired look. “If we had shot it in the traditional way with two cameras, we wouldn’t have been able to complete the film even in 60 days. The budget would have gone overboard by Rs40-50 lakh,” says Vinesh, adding that he was determined to honour his commitment to the producers.

 

The first task was to find a suitable school. Because they could find none in the state capital, they recreated a Thiruvananthapuram village in Brahmapuram near Kochi, finding a closed school that the crew of a Tamil film had previously used as the set for a jail. Although it looked nothing like a school when they first visited, they soon realised that they could create their own “film city” out of it and the surrounding areas. Then came auditions for the child actors. Although a very regional slang of Karette, Vinesh’s native village in Thiruvananthapuram, is spoken in the film, the writers decided not to only audition children from the state capital as this would mean excluding talent from other parts. A 15-day camp was held in Thiruvananthapuram for the short-listed children, where they were trained in a very innovative manner through games and tasks. As part of the research, the writers visited scores of schools and interacted with children. Anand and Murali even lurked by school walls watching kids play cricket and observing their talk and mannerisms, all of which made their way into the film.

 

It was no trouble to finish the shoot in time. Afterwards came small pleasures like sticking the film’s posters; it was almost like a “fantasy” to do it themselves, they say. They even stuck it at places where the film was not playing, like in Venjaramoodu in Thiruvananthapuram near Vinesh’s house. “All those employed to stick posters do it in a very mechanical way,” says Murali. “We did it painstakingly, paying careful attention to the placement so that it would be at eye-level. Ironically, it was the poster we stuck at Venjaramoodu that got the most amount of engagement and conversions. People would take photos and post it on social media, commenting on how there were posters even there. So we used to tell everyone proudly: ‘hey, we are the ones who stuck it’.”

 

But then, the disappointments started mounting. Although they made the film in 2022, hoping to release it the next year, financial constraints hindered the post-production and the release got postponed to November 22, 2024. Unfortunately, 10 other films were releasing on that day and they struggled to find the minimum number of 55 theatres to screen the film. So it got shifted to the next week. But the week after the film’s release, the Allu Arjun-starrer Pushpa 2: The Rule released and two weeks later, came another big budget film, Marco, and Sthanarthi Sreekuttan became the casualty. “We lost 50 out of the 55 theatres,” says Vinesh. “Many theatres supported us, but others marked ‘No show’—which means if a certain number of people hasn’t come for a movie, they can stop playing it after two or three days. They did this to our movie despite 60 people filling the 130-seater theatres, because they wanted to make way for Pushpa 2. When Marco released, we were forced to take out our film from the theatres. If we wanted it to continue playing, we would have to pay almost double our collection.”

 

Even then, they discussed the possibility that the film might make an impact once it released on OTT, but finding a platform to stream it was again a herculean task. Although the film got good reviews from critics and audiences alike, that wasn’t a criteria for the platforms. “For them, only numbers and figures mattered,” says Vinesh. Finally, they found a taker in Saina Play, a smaller player for Malayalam entertainment content, which was a blessing in disguise because on any other platform, Sthanarthi Sreekuttan would have been one among many films. But because this was an exclusive release for Saina, they promoted it well. Viewers from across India watched the film, and the platform’s subscriber base increased substantially.

And then the magic started. The film’s climax, in which the seating arrangement is changed in Sreekuttan’s classroom to a semi-circular one that gets rid of the front-bencher system and promotes equality among the students, started going viral. Schools in Kashmir, Kerala, Punjab, Odisha and different parts of the country adopted it. The Hyderabad district collector directed all government schools in the city to adopt a rectangle-shaped classroom arrangement. Kerala and Tamil Nadu governments introduced a U-shaped arrangement in their schools as a pilot model. “Until four days ago, we kept track of the number of schools which had instituted this change,” says Vinesh. “Now we have lost count. Every hour we are getting updates. The impact is spreading rapidly.”

 

“A new teacher named Amal introduced this seating arrangement for students in the third standard after watching the film, and the children loved it,” says Bindu M.V., head of Pappinisseri West LP School in Kannur. “We feel this allows teachers to pay equal attention to each student in the classroom and the students, too, display better concentration. This might be a problem if there are more number of students. For us, it was not an issue because there are only 14 students in that class.”

 

There has been criticism that this seating arrangement is not good for the students’ posture and causes neck pain. But the friends say that changing the arrangement was never their ultimate aim. Equality is important and let that discussion continue. But just as important is recognising toxic teachers like CP who single out and discriminate against children for their own sadistic pleasure. “When we went to schools to research the film, students would tell us that many teachers who treated us well were cruel to them,” says Vinesh. “They would open up to us in a way they wouldn’t to their own parents or teachers. What they needed most, we realised, was someone to listen to them. It is important to expose such teachers, not just for the sake of the children, but for the teachers themselves to correct their ways.”

The Week