South-Indian films ‘Halal Love Story’ and ‘Putham Pudhu Kaalai’ are set to release this week directly on Amazon Prime Video on October 15th and 16th respectively. Both these films will delve into the lives of actual people, giving an insight into people when they face a particular situation (Not based on true stories, but inspired by true events).
The reliability of these two films will be key to pushing them forward. True, both films have a stellar cast and recognised directors but the stories are rooted deep in the lives of ordinary people and the empathy that can create within the audience is going to be the driving force for these films.
‘Halal Love Story’ is a Malayalam film, set in the early 2000s in a Muslim Malapuram style community, with the film following a group of Orthodox-Muslims who are also film buffs and are part of a “film-society”. Due to the wave of change happening in the Malayalam film Industry at the time (all movies in general), the group is put-off by the posters featuring sensual women, instead of “halal posters” that they are used to. These films affect their sensibilities, and the group set out to create a “halal” feature film on their own.
‘Putham Pudhu Kaalai’ is a Tamil Anthology film featuring five short stories. It will focus on this year’s pandemic, which has been one of the most relatable events that affected nearly everyone on the planet. This feature will focus on five different situations set during the Covid-19 pandemic, which will allow the audience to empathise with the different difficulties people faced during the country-wide lockdown as well as relate to what happened to the main characters as there will be many similarities (subtle and transparent) between the film and real life.
As mentioned earlier, ‘Halal Love Story’ will stream in 3 days, on 15th October 2020 on Amazon Prime Video, while ‘Putham Pudhu Kaalai’ will stream in 4 days, on 16th October 2020 on the same OTT platform.