Director Charukesh Sekar on 'Ammu': 'The story needs to be told'

Chennai, Oct 16

Director Charukesh Sekar said that he got the inspiration for his upcoming film, 'Ammu', featuring actors Aishwarya Lekshmi, Naveen Chandra and Simha in the lead, from an article that claimed that domestic violence cases had increased after the lockdown.

'Ammu', which is slated for release on the OTT platform Prime Video, narrates the thrilling tale of a woman entangled in domestic abuse and her journey towards breaking free.

Charukesh said: "I always wanted to do female-driven stories. I am fan of such films, but the inspiration for this particular story came from an article during the pandemic in which it was reported that domestic violence cases had increased after the lockdown. It got me thinking that this is a consequence of the pandemic that you would never think of and that's when I started reading about domestic violence."

"Even though domestic violence is often talked about, there are so many intricacies and layers to it. I spoke to a lot of survivors and I realised that this is the story that needs to be told. It has been told before but there is a certain perspective I would like to give to it because every woman's journey is unique, her struggles, how they deal with it, how they break out of shackles is unique to them. Likewise Ammu's story is very unique to her. I just felt like this needed to be told," he added.

The movie revolves around Ammu who thinks marriage is a fairy tale - full of love and magic. It all changes when her cop-husband Ravi (Naveen Chandra) hits her for the very first time.

What Ammu thought was a one-off incident turns into a never-ending cycle of abuse, trapping her and breaking her soul and spirit.

Pushed to her limits, Ammu teams up with an unlikely ally (Simha) to break free.

Creatively produced by acclaimed filmmaker Karthik Subbaraj and produced by Kalyan Subramanian and Kaarthekeyen Santhanam of Stone Bench Films, 'Ammu' is set to premiere on Prime Video starting October 19.