Kabani Nadi Chuvannappol (1976)

Backer’s debut telling the love story between a young woman (Shalini) and a radical political activist (Chandran). The relationship ‘humanises’ the idealist who is declared to be a criminal. The featurette ends with police killing the hero, a tragedy the woman learns about through the newspapers. Several young Malayalam directors were strongly influenced by the film, notably T.V. Chandran (Alicinte Anveshanam, 1989), who plays the lead, and Raveendran, who worked on it. The film was repeatedly censored, and even pulled out of theatres during the Emergency, apparently on Indira Gandhi’s instructions.