Neelira, a Tamil survival thriller set during Sri Lanka’s civil war, arrives in theatres on April 3. Directed by Someetharan, a Sri Lankan Tamil filmmaker making his feature debut, the film follows a wedding party navigating one long, tense night as conflict closes in around them. It is produced by Stone Bench Studio’s Kaarthikeyan S and Karthik Subbaraj.
“From the time I was born, my entire youth was spent inside the war,” Someetharan said. “We studied inside it. Our childhood games were inside it. Our love happened inside it, and so did our marriages. That was the life we lived.” He wanted Tamil audiences to see Eelam Tamil homes, kitchens, and daily routines on the big screen for the first time, something he said had never been done properly in Tamil cinema.
Someetharan, who worked as an assistant to the late Balu Mahendra and has directed documentaries about the conflict, said the legendary filmmaker once urged him to tell their story. “He told me to make a film about our people in my very first film. He said he could never manage it himself.” Neelira fulfils that promise, years later.
The director cited Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful and Roman Polanski’s The Pianist as tonal references. He recalled a scene in The Pianist where a musician finds a piano but cannot play it because the sound might draw a bomb. “That scene gave me a deeper understanding of war than any battle sequence,” he said. Neelira operates in similar territory, finding its tension not in combat but in the fragile rituals of civilian life.
Karthik Subbaraj, who co-founded Stone Bench Studio, took the unusual step of requesting a producer credit alongside Kaarthikeyan S. It is the first time he has done so across the studio’s 18 productions. During Sri Lanka’s civil war, Subbaraj had travelled from Bengaluru to Chennai to join the human chain protest. “Cinema is more powerful than weapons,” he said. “We need to tell stories that haven’t been told.”
Lead actor Naveen Chandra, in his fifth collaboration with Stone Bench Studio, plays a captain in the film. He noted that Someetharan carefully cast actors from across India and abroad, drawing from Assam, Mumbai, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, London, and Canada. The cast includes Sananth, Roopa Koduvayur, Kapila Venu, Vidhu, Sidhu Kumaresan, and Rohit Kokate.
Roopa Koduvayur, appearing in her second Tamil film, kept her cards close. “I can’t reveal much about my character,” she said. “But this film will stay with you after you leave the theatre.”
Kaarthikeyan S recalled the first day of shooting in Nagercoil. A simple opening scene refused to come together, with Someetharan calling for take after take. “I told Karthik it looked like this film was going to stretch as long as its title,” he joked. The Tamil word translates roughly to “long night.” The film features music by K and cinematography by Selvaratnam Pradeepan. It releases April 3.