Why: Pa. Ranjith has been trying for a while to fuse his Dalit politics with the “genre” mechanics of a mainstream Tamil movie. But the closest he’s come to realising his dream is not in a film he directed but one that he produced. Pariyerum Perumal was Mari Selvaraj’s first feature, and it disrupted not just the audience’s notion of what a Dalit character was supposed to do on screen but also Pa. Ranjith’s notion of on-screen Dalits, who are angry people. Mari Selvaraj’s protagonist was angry, sure, but his was also the voice of reason, and it resonated far and wide. The film was a well-deserved success, which is all the more appreciable because it broke free from the belief that “message movies” have to be couched in a more familiar “genre”. Simply put, the film created its own genre.
His political documentary Vivek dares to question the powers that be.
His Super Deluxe disrupted the notion of Tamil mainstream cinema.
She’s given us fabulously messy female characters in a short span.
