Vetri Maaran on his decision to explore honour killing on OTT

MUMBAI: Tamil writer-filmmaker Vetri Maaran says he wanted to explore a new subject and push out of comfort zone with a project for a streaming platform.

So, Maaran has made a short film for the anthology "Paava Kadhaigal". Each of the films touches upon the issue of honour killing. Maaran has made "Oor Iravu".

"When (producer) Ashi Dua told me of the plan to do an anthology, I agreed immediately but I didn't want to make a love story. As a mainstream filmmaker, all our films have a love story and we now want to explore something new," Maaran said.

"We thought we should push ourselves out of the comfort zone and do something that we cannot do in mainstream cinema. As part of the discussion, Ashi told us that they were working on a piece in Telugu based on honour killings and pride, and we loved that idea and decided to go ahead with it," he added.

The four stories are directed by Sudha Kongara, Vignesh Shivan, Gautham Vasudev Menon and Maaran. They reflect how love, pride and honour affect human relationships.

Talking about the project, director Sudha Kongara said: "Our bread and butter is love stories so when we were getting into OTT platforms at that time -- which was two years back -- we felt we should do something different that couldn't be out in theatres. I felt brave enough to do what I have done with ‘Thangam' so I was with Vetri Maaran on that."

The anthology features Anjali, Bhavani Sre, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Hari, Kalidas Jayaram, Kalki Koechlin, Padam Kumar, Prakash Raj, Sai Pallavi, Shanthnu Bhagyaraj and Simran, amongst others. "Paava Kadhaigal" will release on Netflix on December 18.