The trailer for Chidambaram’s Balan: The Boy unveils a haunting tale of a young mother on the run with her son, constantly changing names, costumes and identities. Branded “crazy” by others and often seen clutching a rifle, she battles unseen threats while protecting the boy. The film, a multilingual release on June 19, explores identity, belonging and the burdens of origin.
The mysterious new trailer of Balan: The Boy tracks the journey of lost childhood as we see a young mother travelling with her son. At different places, we see the mother giving her son different names, and the trailer displays an element of panic as they continue to run away from something. The mother too assumes multiple costumes and identities on this journey, and we see her troubles multiplying as she protects the son from the world outside.
Other characters describe the mother as “crazy”, and we also see her holding a rifle for long durations of the trailer, including a shot where she’s washing blood off the porch of a house. Another lasting image is that of the boy and her mother lying on a geriatric bed as the mother is seen holding on to the same rifle. The question of the boy asking the mother if “that grandmom will get to us” makes this image far more mysterious.
The cast of the film includes Adhisheshan, Farzana Palathingal, Muhammed Zinaan, Dolly June, Beena Antony, Jean Paul Lal and Girish AD (the last two are also directors of successful films.)
The film is written by Aavesham’s Jithu Madhavan. KVN Productions and Thespian Films, the producers of the film, announced that the film will be released on June 19 in the Malayalam, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and Kannada languages. An earlier press release describes it as a “deeply human story about identity, belonging and the invisible weight of where we come from”. Balan “promises an emotionally layered cinematic experience,” it said. The film reunites much of the team from Chidambaram's hit Malayalam film Manjummel Boys, with Shyju Khalid as cinematographer, Vivek Harshan as editor, Sushin Shyam as music composer, and Ajayan Chalissery as production designer.