This ones for the awards

CHENNAI: While Indian filmmakers usually go to great lengths to ensure their films run to full houses and set the cash registers ringing, debutant Prashanth Ramasamy is all for going the arthouse way.  The 22-year-old Visual Communication student, who is working on his maiden English feature, says confidently, “I want to make a unique film. It may not appeal to the mainstream film audience but my goal is to make a film I believe in.”The debutant director says his film will follow Hollywood standards in terms of characterisation and screenplay. “I’m focusing on making a movie that will find a place in the international film festival circuit,” he says, but quickly adds that he is open to the idea of a commercial release. The Genius Agony, an Unarviyam Production (a theatre group that specialises in mime), is the story of David Steven, an Indian programming expert who faces an obstacle in achieving his goal. How he overcomes the hassles form the crux of the story. According to the young director, the two-hour drama will be very realistic. “I have tried to avoid cliches like creating a situation deliberately to reveal a character,” Ramasamy provides as an example.“This story is original,” claims Ramasamy, confident that the novelty of the plot and treatment of his film, apart from the fact that it doesn’t have a love angle, will keep it from sinking among the hundreds of independent films made these days.Apart from live voice recording in most portions, Ramasamy is planning to go the Hollywood way by minimising dialogues. “I have tried to use expressions rather than dialogues to convey emotions,” he says, adding that Unarviyam’s mime experience helped in this endeavour.“I hope to release the movie by September this year and can use all the help that I can to get there,” signs off Ramasamy.