Tom John Edattukaran fell in love with movies the day he saw Gautham Menon’s Varanam Ayiram. Somewhere inside his young mind, he decided that filmmaking will be a part of his life. That was back when he was in school. However, today, Tom is living the dream. His short film A has been receiving rave reviews both in the virtual and real world. The short film revolves around the life of a man who is blamed for something he is not responsible. Beyond that, it deals with the poignant angle of how society perceives someone with AIDS. Tom, who has also penned the story, says the idea struck him after he read an old newspaper.
“In early 2013, I had received a WhatsApp message on AIDS. It said that no matter how the person has contracted it, people would always see him as a sinner. Then I got thinking about the plight of a person who could have contracted AIDS through ways he is not aware of. So I started searching about the various ways via which HIV is transmitted and AIDS is contracted. “That is when I stumbled onto a newspaper article about contracting AIDS from blades used in barber shops. And that is how I built my story,” explains Tom, who was just returning home after taking up a job as a techie in a company.
A still from the short film A
On why he didn’t pursue filmmaking academically, Tom says, “When I had finished schooling, no institute in Kerala taught Visual Communication and since my family was not willing to send me out of the state, I took up engineering.” This is Tom’s third short film. “The other two were made during my academic years. This is the first one after college. Although I was appreciated for my first two films, the amount of phone calls and appreciation pouring in now is unbelievable,” says Tom, who had pursued his engineering in computer science. “We tried to tell a story with a shoe-string budget. The short film was shot in just two days and I am glad that it is receiving genuine response. And now, I am very confident that I will become a full-fledged filmmaker.”
