Autograph director Cheran demands ban on The Family Man 2

Acclaimed Kollywood director Cheran, who had helmed National Award-winning movies such as Autograph, Thavamai Thavamirundhu and Aadu Koothu, was the latest to demand a ban of The Family Man 2 as it “misrepresented” the history behind the LTTE’s fight for liberation in Sri Lanka.

The show, which has Samantha Akkineni playing a Tamil fighter, had initially courted controversy for referring to her character as a terrorist in the trailer. The second season of the web series began streaming on Friday on Amazon Prime Video.

Cheran tweeted that he had already unsubscribed to Amazon Prime Video and wrote that he is abandoning the streamer till show is removed from the catalogue as he believed that the series portrays LTTE in a bad light. The director also retweeted director and politician Seeman’s press release that also called for a ban of the Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK series.

Seeman, who is part of the Naam Tamilar Katchi political party, on Sunday had urged Amazon Prime Video to stop streaming the show. In a letter to the streamer, he said he was “shocked to see the vulgar depiction of Tamils in the web series” that intends to “tarnish Tamil’s image”.

Meanwhile, Samantha who played Raji in the show, had shared on her social media that the show was a tribute to those who died in the Eelam war. “When Raj and DK approached me to do the character, I was aware that portraying Raji's character required sensitivity and balance. The creative team shared documentaries of the Tamil struggle that included stories of women in the Eelam war. When I watched those documentaries, I was aghast and shocked by the troubles and unspeakable grief that the Tamils of Eelam went through over an extended period of time. I noticed that the aforementioned documentaries had only a few thousand views and that is when it dawned on me how the world just looked away when tens of thousands of people of Eelam lost their lives,” she wrote.