Sabaash Chandrabose, the upcoming Malayalam film starring Vishnu Unnikrishnan and Johny Antony in the lead roles, will be a family-related comedy thriller, writer and director of the film, VC Abhilash told Silverscreen India.
The teaser of the film produced by Jolly Lonappan, under the Jollywood Movies banner, was released on January 1.
In conversation with Silverscreen India, Abhilash said, “Sabaash Chandrabose is set in the year 1986 in a small village in Kerala. The story revolves around the titular character, a youngster (played by Vishnu). The youngster is good friends with his neighbour (played by Johny). One day, Chandrabose makes a mistake and the story unfolds with him making efforts, with Johny’s support, to rectify his mistake.”
In 2018, Abhilash directed his debut film, Aalorukkam, starring Indrans. The film won the National Award for the Best Film in the Social Issues category.
About the genesis of Sabaash Chandrabose’s idea, Abhilash said that after his first film, he wanted to make an entertaining and humorous film next.
“So I decided to develop one of the short stories that I wrote long back into a script for a feature film. I wrote the script for five months in 2019. Besides that, I spent around two years understanding how people lived and how things worked in 1986,” he said.
Abhilash noted that the producer Jolly Lonappan was very keen on family and village-related stories. When he narrated the story of Sabaash Chandrabose, Lonappan became interested in backing the project, Abhilash said. Lonappan had also backed Abhilash’s first film Aalorukkam.
The director said the story is set in a village in Thiruvananthapuram. However, for shooting the film, the team decided to opt for a location in Kollengode in the Palakkad district, bordering Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Kollengode, the director said, was perfect for shooting a film set in the 1980s. The shooting was done in multiple schedules in 2020 and 2021.
“The film will be very nostalgic for the elderly audience and it will be a refreshing watch for the youngsters. In the 1980s, especially in villages, only one or two households had a TV and there was only one channel. So the whole village would gather at that house in the evening to watch TV. This is a very relatable experience which we have incorporated in our film,” he added.
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Kerala State Award-winning dubbing artist Sneha will be making her acting debut with Sabaash Chandrabose. The film also stars Irshad, Dharmajan Bolgatty, Jaffer Idukki, Sudhy Kopa and Remya Suresh, among several other actors.
The film’s technical crew includes cinematographer Sajith Purushan (Unda, Super Sharanya), music composer Sreenath Sivasankaran (Oru Kuttanadan Blog) and art director Saburam. According to Abhilash, the makers are hoping to release the film within two months.