With ‘Paka’, Nithin Lukose takes a tale rooted in Wayanad to a global audience

Co-produced by Anurag Kashyap, ‘Paka’ will premiere at the 46th edition of TIFF

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At the centre of sound designer-filmmaker Nithin Lukose’s directorial debut is a river—sometimes furiously dragging many lives along its rapids, and at other times a silent witness to events. In the Malayalam feature film Paka: The River of Blood, the Orattu river in Kerala’s Wayanad plays along as a character. Set in the filmmaker’s picturesque village in Wayanad, the plot revolves around a generations-old feud between two families.  

Paka is set to premiere at the 46th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

For Nithin who grew up listening to his grandmother’s stories about the river, and of people like her who migrated from Kottayam to Wayanad, the film is a bit too personal. This is also probably why the filmmaker looked into his own village to create characters for his story. “This is a story from my place, a story I can only fully tell. I wanted to go back to my roots when I do a film,” he says.

Not just that, the filmmaker has cast a few villagers to essay these characters. Clearly etched in Nithin’s childhood memories about the Orattu river is Jose—the man who has braved the gushing river and its dangerous trenches for years to recover dead bodies. When Nithin etched a character inspired from the real-life Jose, he ended up casting the 65-year-old man who has never faced a camera, to essay the role. Speaking to THE WEEK, Nithin says it was not very difficult to convince the villagers to act, as they knew him well. He also conducted a two-month-long workshop to introduce them to the basics of acting and make them feel comfortable in front of the camera. The cast of Paka also features Basil Paulose, Nithin George and Vinitha Koshy among others.

An alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India, Nithin has been working as a sound designer for the past five years. Nithin, who was also the first recipient of the Resul Pookutty Foundation Scholarship, has also interned with the renowned sound designer. He has worked with multiple films in several languages,  including Thithi (Kannada), Mallesham (Telugu), and Dibakar Banerjee’s Bollywood film Sandeep Aur Pinki Faraar.

Speaking about sounds in Paka, Nithin says: “Wayanad's sound has a texture of its own. Be it the crickets, or other nature sounds, I used to walk around with a recorder to capture those. This process went on for almost a year.”

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The film, produced by Raj Rachakonda, director-producer of Mallesham, is co-produced by Anurag Kashyap.Kashyap, who watched Paka at its earlier stage, was impressed and decided to step in as producer and suggested some reshoots and re-edits. “He trusted the project and wanted to be a part of it,” says Nithin. Paka was one of the five films  selected in the Work in Progress Lab category of the NFDC Film Bazaar held earlier. Nithin says the feedback he received at the event from foreign mentors helped him re-edit and shape the film better. 

After the festival circuit, Nithin hopes to have a theatrical release for Paka, depending on the pandemic situation. He already has a second story in mind, which he plans to start filming next year. 

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