Filmmaker Divya Bharathi is known for her hard-hitting documentaries. Her last, Kakkoos (2017), on the lives of manual scavengers in Tamil Nadu, unflinchingly exposed the ugly, shameful truth of the inhuman practise to the rest of the world.
It was announced earlier this year that her next would be on the devastating effects of Cyclone Ockhi that wreaked serious havoc on coastal India in December last year, would be out soon. After much delay, the trailer of her latest documentary titled Orutharum Varela (Nobody came) was released on YouTube on Thursday.
The trailer begins with an oppari (lament) and has several women from the fishing community wailing and mourning the death of their men, who were at sea.
Several razor-sharp questions are being raised in the trailer – “We’ve lost only one, but in Kanyakumari, Kerala there is no male heir living. What will we say about them?”, “It is unbelievable that a single person like Tamil Nadu Weatherman knew it as cyclone but not the government which posses the Met department”, “Did you search with navy or helicopters? We rescued them on our boats!”, “The second largest Indian Naval force but they could not go beyond 200 nautical miles. What for *** do we have the Naval force?”
The southern-most coastal districts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala were the worst affected by Cyclone Ockhi - Kanyakumari and Thiruvananthapuram to be specific. It was later reported that the disaster could have been averted or lessened had the government warned fishermen of the storm in advance.
However, the events that unfurled after, resulting in the loss of several lives, have been attributed to government apathy and rescue inaction.
Speaking about her documentary to TNM, Divya said, "I mainly stayed in Kanyakumari which saw the greatest damage. I was there from December 9 to 27. In that period, I also travelled to Kerala and visited places like Poonthura which were affected by the cyclone. After this, I went to Nagapattinam and Cuddalore because a lot of fishermen who had died in Kanyakumari were from these places. Then I went to Thoothukudi - there were fishermen from there too, who had gone on the Kumari boats. I shot for two days there. I also went to Pudhukottai.”
MK Pagalavan has edited the documentary. Natarajan Sankaran has composed music with lyrics by Thanikodi and vocals by Resmi Satheesh. The documentary has been produced by LeftSide Media.
Watch it here:
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