Troll Life , a short feature film taken by a group of Kerala-based techies, has clinched the best film, known as the Platinum Film of the Year, award at the India Film Project-2016, the annual edition of Asia’s largest film-making challenge.
The Malayalam film, canned in a matter of about 50 hours as stipulated in the contest, was adjudged the winner from among 1,220 films from 262 cities in 20 countries.
“It’s a six-minute feature in the experimental genre, actually a dark comedy, made as part of a 50-hour film-making challenge. The theme for the competition was ‘On top of the world’ and it was required to have a compulsory element of a comic book,” says Lijo Joseph, an IT professional who produced the film.
He says that the film revolves around an argument between two friends with distinct ideology over a Facebook post and demonstrates how it takes a turn for worse.
It was this passion for cinema that brought these IT professionals from Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi together to float First Print Studios in 2011. Their first short flick, Human Boundaries on the Hindu refugees from Pakistan, was well-received in the film circuit. “We have so far made five films, but this was the first time that we had won this recognition in the professional film-making category,” he says.
The film is directed by Rahul Riji Nair, an independent film-maker from the IT industry who founded the First Print Studios at Thiruvananthapuram. Mr. Joseph explains that the India Film Project stipulates making of film in 50 minutes flat after the theme is announced and each entry should be between four and six minutes long. Troll Life was selected the winner in early October following which it was screened at Mumbai. The team intends to screen the film at various festivals across India.
