Four industries unveil the Balan trailer in four tongues

The trailer for Balan The Boy is out, and the people who released it tell you how far this film is reaching. Suriya put up the Tamil cut, Ajay Devgn the Hindi, Naga Chaitanya the Telugu, and Raj B Shetty the Kannada, four stars from four industries each carrying the film into their own audience on the same day. The film opens in theatres on June 19 in Malayalam, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and Kannada.

That spread of support is unusual for a film built around a child. Balan The Boy is directed by Chidambaram, who made Manjummel Boys, and written by Jithu Madhavan of Aavesham and Romancham, a pairing of two of the most distinctive voices working in Malayalam right now. Chandu Salimkumar plays the title role, with Tovino Thomas reported to take a small but pivotal part.

The trailer sells mood over plot. It moves through themes of identity, belonging and survival, holding back its story while letting the suspense build, the kind of cut that tells you what a film feels like rather than what happens in it. Much of that texture is the work of a familiar crew: Shyju Khalid on camera, Sushin Shyam on the score, Vivek Harshan editing, the same technical core that gave Manjummel Boys its grip.

The film has carried momentum since its market screening at the Marché du Film during this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it drew the first wave of curiosity that has run through the announcement, the first poster and now the trailer. KVN Productions and Thespian Films jointly produce.

A five-language release fronted by Suriya, Ajay Devgn, Naga Chaitanya and Raj B Shetty is a heavy push for a small-scale human drama, the sort of cross-industry backing usually reserved for star vehicles. Here it is pointed at a boy and a survival story, in theatres on June 19.