Exclusive! Santosh Sivan: Mohanlal’s Barroz needs more than 100 people on sets to resume shooting

Earlier this year, Mohanlal kicked off his directorial debut Barroz: Guardian of D’Gama’s amid much fanfare. The team had even shot for the 3D children’s fantasy movie for a few days in Kochi before the second wave of COVID-19 brought it to a halt. 

Now, its cinematographer Santosh Sivan gives us the update on the much-anticipated movie, which also stars Mohanlal in the lead role. Mohanlal and Santosh had shot a few portions with Prithviraj in April. 

On its current status, Santosh tells OTTplay, “Barroz needs more than 100 people to be on the sets to start shooting again. Foreign actors will also have come from abroad. So, it will be delayed for a few more months. December or January would be a realistic date.”

The film, which revolves around a 400-year-old treasure guardian and a girl named Isabella, essayed by Shayla McCaffrey, also has a host of foreign actors. The movie was set to be shot in a massive studio in Kochi and Goa and its pre-production had begun years ago. 

Meanwhile, Santosh has managed to complete his segment for Netflix’s upcoming Malayalam anthology, which is based on MT Vasudevan Nair’s short stories. The acclaimed cinematographer-director tells us that shooting the segment, which has Siddique in the lead, also came with its set of challenges.

“Even while I was shooting the Netflix segment, the filming was halted in Kerala several times in spite of there only being 20 people on the sets. What happens is that when a shoot is going on, many others crowd to see what’s going on and if someone reports it, the cops have to take action,” says the director. 

The anthology also has segments helmed by Priyadarshan, Jayaraj and other filmmakers. Mohanlal is also rumoured to be part of one of those featurettes, which are 40-minutes-long. However, there has been no official confirmation regarding his casting yet. 

While Biju Menon had revealed that he will be playing the lead in Priyadarshan’s segment, Jayaraj had exclusively told OTTplay that his short film will have Indrans, Renji Panicker, Surabhi Lakshmi, Nedumudi Venu and Kailash as part of the cast.