Unni met Tharun Moorthy at the time of his wedding. Unni was doing the wedding photography, and created an album called Pistha Kalyanam, with the Pistha song from Neram playing in the background and Tharun and his bride Revathy dancing, enjoying with friends, and yes, getting married too. Unni found out that he had more in common with Tharun. Both of them loved cinema.
Tharun had made two short films earlier and Unni wanted to make a feature film. But he had to have some work in his hand to show the producers he would approach. With this in mind, Unni directed a short film Budhimanaya Kakka with Tharun in the lead.
“We don’t call it short film, but a short feature. We made it by bringing all the aspects of a full-length feature in, what you might call a compressed feature,” says Unni Fineday. The last name comes from working for a place called Fineday photography in Tripunithura. “But I am from Perumpalam, an island in Alappuzha,” he says as he gets off a boat. “It is here that we shot the entire film, the script of which was also written by Tharun.”
Tharun plays Kakka, the central character, a negative one. He is a menace to the entire town and is now onto his latest misdeed — stealing the precious golden cross of the local church. Throughout the film you hear a voiceover of a man who stops his narration mysteriously, mentioning the cycle of events, and asking the audience, ‘so who am I tell all this?’
“We were appreciated by people from the movies, like IDI director Sajid Yahiya. Most of the film crew are my friends and neighbours. Roopesh Unni who produced it is a childhood friend. So is Amar Sooraj who edited it and Unnikrishnan who gave music,” says Unni, who put a witty one liner at the opening credits — that there are no females in this film because of the 14-second rule. His next wish of course is to somehow make that feature film he dreams of.
