Mark the name Murali K Thalluri, even though you may not get a chance to see his very first film 2:37, a high school suicide drama, very soon.
But the 21-year-old Australian director's movie was such hot property at the recent Cannes festival that it was sold to more than 15 countries overnight. And that is no mean feat. Of the 250 films shown at the extremely competitive festival, just about 10 percent are sold.
The buzz has it that Canberra-born Thalluri, who made the film for less than US$1 million, can easily get ten times that budget for his next film.
The complex tale, which received stand-out attention and good reviews at Cannes, is about six high school students whose lives are interwoven with rape, incest and drug abuse among other things, climaxing in the suicide of one of the students.
Despite its seemingly downbeat subject, 2:37 was hailed for its insights into the human nature. Thalluri made the film following the suicide of one of his friends. In the movie, the story begins at 2:37 am.
'Despite the omnipresent crowds which surround everyone during school life,' says Thalluri, 'school can be an extreme place capable of engendering illness and depression, and enabling an illness like suicide to prosper.'
His aim was to present 'high school life as a realm where happiness and sadness live side by side,' he adds, 'and where one can pass from one to the other in a perfectly ordinary and common way.'
