Karinji (2024), a 24-minute Malayalam short film written and directed by Sheethal N. S., has been officially selected for the 30th Busan International Film Festival under the Wide Angle – Asian Short Film Competition, a section dedicated to outstanding short films and documentaries that expand cinematic horizons through bold, distinctive perspectives.
The festival will take place from September 17 to 26, 2025, in Busan, South Korea.
The crew of Karinji includes director and writer Sheethal N. S., cinematographer Anubhav Surehatia, editor Joram Yajo, production designer Abanda Carmal Chakkalakkal, and sound designer and recordist Irfan Hadi. All are recent graduates of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, and the film is their final-year production.
The film stars Aneesh N, Noor, Prathul C, Sanjay Santhosh, Suraj Pratap Singh, Remya Valsala, and Suvidha Vijayan.
For director Sheethal N. S., Karinji is as much an act of reconstruction as it is a retelling.
Shot in black and white and framed in a 1.2:1 ratio, the film deliberately evokes a period aesthetic while underlining its nature as a work shaped by memory.
“I wasn’t aiming for a straightforward narrative,” Sheethal tells Maktoob. “I wanted to move between memory and presence. Visually, the film leans on the textures of the North Malabar landscape.”
The story of Karinji first reached Sheethal through family memory. Their grandmother recalled hearing the painful cry of Karinji in her childhood—a ghostly figure of a pregnant woman, raped and killed.
“That story made a strong impression on me and stayed with me for a long time,” Sheethal says.
In preparing for the film, they spoke to elders in the community and uncovered an “archive of local memory and oral traditions,” which informed both the storytelling and the film’s layered gaze.
“In working with these memories, I also became aware of the colonial gaze—like the photograph of a Thiyya wedding taken by a white man—and my own gaze as a filmmaker returning to these histories.”
For Sheethal, the Busan selection marks a significant turning point. “Until now, our films have only been seen within the FTII community and a few friends. It feels wonderful that Karinji can now travel and find viewers elsewhere. This selection also feels like an encouragement to keep experimenting with form and storytelling.”
Sound designer and recordist Irfan Hadi reflects on the film’s sonic journey as one that was as deliberate as its visuals.
“The film was shot in sync sound, which allowed us to preserve the authenticity of both performances and locations. Many of the natural ambient sounds you hear were recorded directly on site,” he says.
Though set in North Malabar, the film was shot entirely in Guhaghar, Ratnagiri district, Maharashtra—chosen for its geographical resemblance and due to shooting radius restrictions around the institute in Pune.
To deepen the sense of place, Irfan recorded additional ambience in Kerala that resonated with the film’s imagery. Stereo microphones were used to capture layered ambience, while shotgun microphones helped cut through noisy environments during the recreation of the period setting. Importantly, Irfan notes, sound was never treated as an afterthought.
“Many of the choices were made as early as the pre-production stage, during script development, and they continued to evolve organically after the edit, as the film gradually took its final shape.”
, a 24-minute short film written and directed by Sheethal N. S., has been officially selected for the 30th Busan International Film Festival under the Wide Angle – Asian Short Film Competition, a section dedicated to outstanding short films and documentaries that expand cinematic horizons through bold, distinctive perspectives.){kind=link}