• Golden Globe Awards

Father (India)

“This film is real life. A rollercoaster of reality. Certain events and incidents in the movie were of the actor’s real life stories. This movie was shot to save lives and I believe it has” – says P. Samuthirakani,  director of the Indian film Father.According to the director, India leads in the number of students who commit suicide because of the pressure from their families to perform academically well in school. The teenagers sometimes feel there is no solution and prefer to tragically end their lives.Singaperumal (Thambi Ramaiah) enrolls his son Chakravarthy (Raghavan) to a school where they focus mainly on academics. The boy dislikes the school and feels tortured. His friends hatch up a plan to extricate the boy from the school’s dorm – where no one can visit him-  and give Chakravarthy a good day filled with fun and excitement. Once the adventure is discovered, the school severely punishes the boy ,leading to his death. The school authorities cover up the  whole incident, leading the father  to denounce the school by filing an official police report. But nothing can return him his son who became a victim of so called perfect education…Samuthirakani says that his inspiration came about four years ago when he read a news article about a girl named Dhairiyalakshmi who had committed suicide despite receiving grades in school which were well above average. This incident touched him deeply and every year that passes he dreads the month when the government board exam results are announced in fear of similar news. He asked himself – why do the children not see their families as a natural support system? How can the parents ignore signs of a child in need of help? The answers to these questions resulted in his Tamil language movie originally titled AppaFather in English.The film is an effort to bring awareness to this tragic issue. And the director is proud to say that his work has started the discussion on how to deal with the matter.