Aattam—From me too to us too’

'Aattam' (meaning the Play) that won the best national feature film award announced in New Delhi Friday! is a story of sexual harassment accusation made by the sole actress of a theatre group against a popular movie star who joined their team recently and comes at a time when the nation is angry over the rape and murder of a young doctor in Kolkata.

- Shankar Raj

Were all In real life, 'Aattam' is also the story of 12 young men who nursed ambitions of entering the Malayalam film world. They were dreamers who had, a few years back, formed a drama troupe. As one of the 12 dreamers told the media: "Acting is in our blood".

However, acting in dramas cannot be a means to livelihood and so they split and went on with their lives. Only two of them could make it to mainstream movies while the others went on to variously become: a CITU worker, a tile laying worker, labourers, painters and mechanics.

It was Anand Ekarshi, who wrote and directed 'Aattam', who brought the 12 men together and then thought of a plot of the thriller film which is loosely based on Twelve Angry Men, an American courtroom drama, which was first a teleplay in 1954 in 12 episodes, then a film directed by Sydney Lumet in 1957 starring Henry Fonda and then remade yet again with the same name, this time starring Jack Lemmon.