Just days before the release of his new movie Aadujeevitham, actor-filmmaker Prithviraj Sukumaran is in Mumbai, attending a press conference and talking up a project he says is one of the demanding in his career yet.
Blessy’s Malayalam-language movie will be released on March 28 as The Goat Life in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. Aadujeevitham has been adapted from renowned Malayalam writer Benyamin’s Goat Days, itself inspired by real-life migrant worker Najeeb Ahmed’s hellish experiences while herding livestock in the Saudi Arabian desert.
Apart from starring Sukumaran as Najeeb, The Goat Life has Amala Paul and Haitian actor Jimmy Jean-Louis in the cast. Shot by Sunil KS and scored by AR Rahman, the survival drama promises a visually striking and psychologically rich exploration of one man’s attempt to liberate himself from modern-day slavery.
The film’s director is a reputed hit-maker. Sukumaran himself has a storied career, spanning productions in Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. The 41-year-old movie star will be familiar to Hindi viewers from Aiyyaa (2012), Aurangzeb (2013) and most recently Salaar: Part 1 – Ceasefire ((2023).
Despite their collective heft, and even after the reputation of Benyamin’s novel, Blessy and Sukumaran struggled for years to get The Goat Life off the ground. Sukumaran spoke to Scroll during his Mumbai visit about the obstacles involved in the film’s production, the personal investments he made…
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