Have you thought about how terrifying it would be to not know whether the next step you take is safe – literally! You would, if you have walked on a minefield. Thankfully, we live in a part of the world where we don’t have to worry about stepping on landmines. But, the people in the erstwhile battle zones of Sri Lanka encounter such fears every day. The war that raged for nearly 2 decades has left the land strewn with mines. It is estimated that both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan army have planted around 15 lakh mines all over the battle grounds – many of them forgotten with the war. But, the people of these places still live in the perpetual fear of stepping on one of these sleeping explosives. Director Anand Maiyur Krishnan brings out this disturbing reality about the after effects of a war through his film Methivedi.
The film talks about the struggles of a mother who is trying too save her baby after getting stuck in a minefield. The cast of the film includes popular TV artiste Neelima and Daniel Balaji, who plays a Sri Lankan Army officer. It is said that Daniel Balaji studied Sinhalese in a month for this movie.
This will be a very unconventional attempt; the director says, the first in India to take up the issue of forgotten landmines. He hopes that the film inspires the clearing of all minefields created by either side during the war. The movie is of a duration of just 90 minutes and the director says that this will be an effort on par with world cinema. Mithivedi has already gone in for a commercial web based release in select parts of the globe and is scheduled to release in India soon.
