Experiencing Interruptions?

Pottu

Thiilaga, 36 years old barathanatyam teacher, who is living with her daughter Durga, has lost her husband recently and going through emotional struggle living alone. She struggles through the process of accepting the society's forced cultural norms on a woman who lost her husband. Durga understands her mother's loss and struggle, in contrast to how she was when her father was alive. Durga is curious to find the secret behind the cultural restrictions that caused Thilaga's change after her father's loss. Durga's search for answers continues while Thilaga continues to face unlikely situations in the society.

  • Navayuga Kugarajah
    Director
  • Navayuga Kugarajah
    Writer
  • Navayuga Kugarajah
    Producer
  • Navayuga Kugarajah
    Key Cast
    "Thilaga"
  • Sharon Pracy
    Key Cast
    "Durga"
  • Julienna Johnphilip
    Key Cast
    "Radha"
  • Yasodha Radhakrishnan
    Key Cast
    "Teacher"
  • Geethani Senawirathne
    Key Cast
    "Sumana"
  • Priya Daniel
    Key Cast
    "Nirmala"
  • Madhuni Hiranya Alahackone
    Director of Photography
  • Joshuah Heby
    Production Designer
  • Joshuah Heby
    Editor
  • Goabi Ramanan P
    Art Director
  • Sundaresan Jegadeesan
    Lighting
  • MC Raj
    Music
  • Madara Godage
    Make-up
  • Ama Wijesekara
    Costume
  • Nanda Nadhi Jayakody
    Sound Design
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    12 minutes 45 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    June 10, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    6,500 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Sri Lanka
  • Country of Filming:
    Sri Lanka
  • Language:
    Tamil
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2:39:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Navayuga Kugarajah

Navayuga Kugarajah is a Sri Lankan Actress and Writer born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. Her first movie as an actress was Komaali Kings, which was screened as the first commercial Tamil movie after the civil war of Sri Lanka. Her first big break was The Single Palm Tree (Lead Role) which was selected in more than thirty-nine film festivals, nominated in twenty-two and won sixteen awards. The film was awarded by American Filmatic Arts Awards as the Best experimental foreign feature. Her upcoming movies are Sixth Land(Tamil), Grivessipura(Sinhala), and Beyond Seeing(Sinhala).
And this year, Navayuga directed her debut short film 'Pottu'. She also produced and played the lead role in this short film.

After completing B.Com and Dip in IT, she started her career as a writer and released her first book in 2010. After a lot of encouragement and positive feedback she kept writing and kept publishing her poetries for her online audience. She worked as a government school teacher for seven years, while doing training facilitation for the people affected by the civil war in Sri Lanka. Her tri-lingual skills helped her translate scripts of a few major films in Sri Lanka, including Komaali Kings (Tamil) and The Frozen Fire (Ginnen upan seethala - Sinhala) She was also involved in modeling industry participating, competing, and winning titles in few pageants for the past few years.

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Director Statement

This film aims to focus on the inclusion of widowed women in the society. Traditionally, women from very religious tamil backgrounds are put through various depressing events, once their husband passes away. The challenges faced by widowed women are well known in all parts of the world, but having to go through such challenging activities which are basically destroying them mentally, puts so much pressure on them and adds to the depression and anxiety that they are already going through because of the loss of their partner.

These events include dressing them up as a bride and then removing all the jewels, breaking the bangles, removing the kunkum “pottu” on their forehead, and changing them to a white saree. But, what happens afterwards still remains the same. The widowed women will not be allowed to wear pottu afterwards, and even if they wear, they are being gossiped about as being misbehaving. This behaviour is whats actually stopping widowed women from wearing “pottu”. This affects them mentally in a very deep scale because of having to stop doing something that they have been doing with love their entire life. Being reminded about their loss every time they look at their own face put them into depression.

This is just one of many such activities this project will be addressing, for example widowed women not being allowed to participate in simple cultural activities such as taking “Arathi” is another major incident where they feel separated and rejected. These problems make them feel like they are not being including in the community anymore and restricts them from living a happy normal life.