In a move that is expected to change the perception of general audience about low-budget independent movies, director Karthik Subbaraj’s production firm Stone Bench has announced that they are venturing into the business of producing and releasing ‘indie films’, offering a much-required platform for quality content that would otherwise fail to find distributors or audience. considering the overtly commercialised nature of the movie business.
Directors Vetri Maaran and Pa Ranjith revealed the title of the first such film to be released by the former’s production firm, under its purpose-built arm Stone Bench Indie, on Saturday. The film, Alli , is the Tamil-dubbed version of the Sanal Kumar Sasidharan directorial Chola in Malayalam featuring Joju George and Nimisha Sajayan in the lead.
“These are movies that have already made their presence felt in various national and international film festivals. We want to bring these movies to theatres here to reach a wider audience. This, we hope, would give a huge boost to independent filmmakers and also give the public a chance at large to watch these amazing movies on the big screen,” according to a statement from Stone Bench.
Recently, director Vetri Maaran, via his Grass Root Film Company production house, announced that he would be presenting the National Award-winning Tamil film, Baaram , directed by Priya Krishnaswamy, in theatres. Vetri Maaran had previously released Lens directed by Jayaprakash Radhakrishnan, which had fetched positive reviews during its film festival run.
Meanwhile, Stone Bench has three feature films — including Bhoomika featuring Aishwarya Rajesh and Penguin featuring Keerthy Suresh — and two web series in various stages of production. The other production venture stars actor Vaibhav in the lead. Karthik Subbaraj is in London shooting for Dhanush’s 40th film, which is touted to be a gangster flick.
