Cast – Prince, Harish, Raghavan
Story, Cinematography and Direction – Monesh
Original Music Scores – Raghavan
Dialogue – Prince, Monesh
Editing and Colour Grading – Sasi
Sound Design – Diluxshan
Costume Designer – Thameem Ansari
Assistants – Chandru, Praveen, Charles
Producers – Sabarna, Ashirvad, Arvind, Arul, John and Adveta
Post-Production & Mixing – Ting Studio and White Bird Studio

Nalladhor Veenai, is an eye opening short film about sexual abuse, and specifically the abuse of children. Set in India, the film effectively gets to the heart of why sexual abuse is traumatic—in the most ordinary of circumstances a person’s life can be altered forever and they are often shamed into not speaking about it.

Created by White Bird Pictures and directed by Monesh Kumar, the film was inspired by a combination of experiences of friends of the filmmakers and an episode from Aamir Khan’s Satyameva Jeyate, an Indian talk show that features issues considered taboo. Despite the low budget they were working with—the entire film was shot on a DSLR camera—the team behind the film felt very strongly about opening their viewers’ eyes to the prevalence of child abuse.

As part of the process of pre-production team White Bird Pictures spoke to many people from various fields/areas of expertise including psychologists to determine how to address the subject. Having once considered creating a documentary the team decided to use the backdrop of a fictional story based on real life events instead.

“We felt a story would reach deeper and hit harder in the hearts of viewers.”

Given that the topic of sexual abuse is often difficult to broach, especially when concerns of saving face are in the mix, casting for the film was the most difficult part of making it. But the team was able to find dedicated artists who were willing to play the roles with conviction.

After it was first screened at the AVM Preview Theatre in Chennai, Nalladhor Veenai began winning awards at a number of festivals around India. Team White Bird Pictures wanted to take the film and its message further, so on January 1^st, 2014 it was shared on YouTube.