Jayaraj's next film inspired by famous Rajan Poduval's photo

Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 14 (IANS): Filmmaker Jayaraj is now taking a real life story made famous by a photograph to celluloid.

After the mainstream and highly successful "4 the People" and its Tamil and Telugu remakes, it is time for him to turn to good cinema. And he is doing so with "Makalkku".

In 1990, T. Rajan Poduval, a well-known photographer working for Malayalam newspaper Mathrubhumi, had photographed a woman patient sitting in the veranda of a mental hospital in Thiruvananthapuram.

She was seen clutching a bundle close to her body. Also visible were two tiny legs hanging out of the bundle. Fourteen years later, Rajan met the same woman and her child at the same hospital. The baby had grown up to be a beautiful teenager, and the mother also had improved. That became possible with the help of a particular doctor.

Jayaraj, a national award-winning director, has two other National award winners acting as the doctor and the mentally challenged woman: Suresh Gopi and Shobhana respectively.

Suresh Gopi won a national award for his performance in Jayaraj's "Kaliyattam".

After a long gap, Shobhana appeared in a Malayalam film again in "Mambazhakalam". "Makalkku" is going to be an entirely different experience for the two-time National Award winner as she speaks only one word in the entire film: "Killeri".

Jayaraj has alternated between aesthetically good films like "Kaliyattam", "Bheebhats" or "Santham" and commercial ventures like "Millennium Brothers" and "4 the People".