Celebrated filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan talks about his film Once Again, which was screened at the Jio MAMI 18th Mumbai Film Festival.

On his inspiration

The film is inspired from a real incident where a man in Kerala faked his own death for insurance money. Till date nobody knows what exactly happened to him or where he disappeared, it’s all a mystery. But that got me thinking…

How could a man be so obsessed with his scheme to get rich quickly and the lengths to which he could go to achieve it. My film’s protagonist is initially poor, jobless and dependent on his wife’s salary. And suddenly he lands a job in the Gulf. He goes from being a nobody to suddenly being sought after. He thinks that money is the answer to everything. So he puts his morals aside and schemes a way to fake his death to land the insurance.

But in doing so, he commits the biggest crime! He has virtually killed himself. He erases his existence and changes his face/ name but what’s the use? The act is done! He is virtually still dead!

Influence of nature on his art

I love the rains and the rains also love me. India’s subtropical climate has so much riding on it. Rains make us feel happy. For us it’s life. But this isn’t the case in the West, where they find it interrupting.

Their attitudal and cultural difference are evident by an example where the West refused to hear the Megh Malhar also!