Kochi: Run Kalyani, the debut feature film of Geetha J has won the best international feature film award at the Regina International Film Festival, Canada. The film has been to nearly 20 international festivals and has won nine awards. The movie is yet to be released.
The Malayalam film tells the tale of a young cook who who lives with her ailing aunt in a rundown ‘agraharam’ in Thiruvananthapuram.
While living a monotonous life everyday, it tries to tell the audience through a series of events that each day is different. Geetha is a writer, director and producer. She started her career as a print journalist and later moved into the visual media. On acquiring her own video camera, she made her first film ‘Woman with a video camera’ (2005).
Geetha has collaborated with multi-award winning documentary filmmaker Ian McDonald on all his works, notably the internationally acclaimed Grierson-nominated feature documentary ‘Algorithms’ (2012) about young blind chess players from India and ‘Freedom’ (2017), a four-screen film installation on the radical legacy of Martin Luther King, exhibited in Newcastle, Brighton and London.
Geetha lives alternatively in Thiruvananthapuram in her family house and Newcastle where she lectures on film practice.