Chidambaram’s next, ‘Balan The Boy’, heads to Cannes
Backed by Venkat K Narayana and Shailaja Desai Fenn under KVN Productions and Thespian Films, and written by Jithu Madhavan, ‘Balan’ arrives with a mix of creative familiarity and new ambition.
Backed by Venkat K Narayana and Shailaja Desai Fenn under KVN Productions and Thespian Films, and written by Jithu Madhavan, ‘Balan’ arrives with a mix of creative familiarity and new ambition.
Backed by Venkat K Narayana and Shailaja Desai Fenn under KVN Productions and Thespian Films, and written by Jithu Madhavan, ‘Balan’ arrives with a mix of creative familiarity and new ambition.
Riding on the momentum of ‘Manjummel Boys’, Chidambaram is taking his next film ‘Balan’ to an international platform, with a marketing screening scheduled at the Cannes Film Festival on May 14. The move places the film, and by extension Malayalam cinema, within a global conversation that has been steadily expanding in recent years.
Backed by Venkat K Narayana and Shailaja Desai Fenn under KVN Productions and Thespian Films, and written by Jithu Madhavan, ‘Balan’ arrives with a mix of creative familiarity and new ambition. For Shailaja, the Cannes screening carries a personal weight. She recalls attending the festival in 2022 and making a quiet promise to return with her own film. Standing there now with ‘Balan’, she sees it as a moment shaped by persistence as much as belief in the story they set out to tell.
That belief, she suggests, lies in the film’s emotional core. ‘Balan’ is positioned as a story that cuts across age and geography, rooted in experiences that feel both specific and widely relatable. Venkat K Narayana echoes that sentiment, framing the film as more than just another project. For him, it represents a reminder of why one enters the industry in the first place, while also reflecting the growing confidence of Malayalam cinema on the global stage.
At its centre, ‘Balan’ explores questions of identity and belonging. Chidambaram describes it as a film shaped by the weight people carry from where they come from, and the often unspoken urge to find where they truly fit in. It is a theme he approaches with restraint, aiming to create an experience that audiences feel before they fully process. In that sense, the director sees Cannes as an apt space, one that has consistently embraced films built on such emotional truths.
The film is also supported by a team that has become closely associated with a certain visual and tonal consistency in Malayalam cinema, including cinematographer Shyju Khalid, composer Sushin Shyam, editor Vivek Harshan and production designer Ajayan Chalissery.