'The story of Jeem Boom Bha unfolds over a single night'

Debutant director Rahul Ramachandran’s Jeem Boom Bha is ready for release. A small-budget comic thriller, the film is in its final stages of post-production and is expected to come out next month.

Askar Ali, Baiju Santhosh, Anish Gopalan (who played Safar in Theevandi), and Anju Kurien (who played the second female lead in Njan Prakashan) form the main cast. Each member has an equal prominence in the story, says Rahul. 

The film’s first look poster had Baiju and Askar posing like John Travolta and Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction. But the director clarifies that Jeem Boom Bha has no connection to the film and that it was simply a marketing ploy.

On the subject, Rahul says, “The entire film takes place over the course of a single night. There are four interconnected situations which take place during New Year’s Eve. We usually see stories of this sort in Tamil films but not much in Malayalam.”

Three main writers have collaborated on the script — Vivek Raj, Limu Shanker and Rahul himself. A hotel management graduate, Rahul had been developing the script for a long time. The team managed to successfully finish just one draft of the screenplay in 18 days. Filming was finished in 28 days without any loss in quality, the director tells us.

Writing a script around events taking place in a small time frame is relatively easier, says Rahul. “The script is based on some real situations that some of us have gone through. However, instead of going for a cliched thriller approach, we went for something more simplistic and fresh.”

A Thiruvananthapuram-based filmmaker, Rahul has previously made three short films before moving on to the full-length feature. Sachin VG, a college junior of the filmmaker, is producing the film. “Sachin and I got together and decided to do something serious for a small budget. Aside from the cameraman and music director, everyone else used to be part of different professions.” 

A rap song by Fejo and a title track by Jubair Mohammed have been written. PS Jayahari has composed the background score.