The Terrorist (1998)

The Terrorist (Tamil: தீவிரவாதி (Theeviravaathi)) is an Indian Tamil film directed by Santosh Sivan. The film portrays a period in the life of a 19-year-old woman, Malli (Ayesha Dharker), sent to assassinate a leader in South Asia through a suicide bombing. It stars Dharker, K. Krishna and Sonu Sisupal. Released in 1998, the film was shot in 15 days, with natural lighting, on a budget of $50,000.

The film won a number of awards at international film festivals. Actor John Malkovich first saw the film at the 1998 Cairo International Film Festival and subsequently adopted the film as a kind of post-facto executive producer (the reissued film's titles read "John Malkovich Presents"). Critic Roger Ebert has included the film in his series of "Great Movies" reviews. Ebert concludes his review with the following line: "Every time I see the film, I feel a great sadness, that a human imagination could be so limited that it sees its own extinction as a victory."
The film that proved his mastery over the visual language was The Terrorist which has become a textbook of sorts for visual communication students, with scenes from the movie being used by Michael Chapman, Martin Scorsese’s cinematographer, to explain the tenets of cinematography during workshops. According to film critic Roger Ebert, it was a film ‘scripted by the camera’. Says Sivan: “One day I got a call from Samuel Lee Jackson who was interested to cast the heroine of The Terrorist, Ayesha, in a Hollywood film.

Synopsis

The Terrorist focuses on a 19 year old woman named Malli, who joined a terrorist organization at a very young age after her brother was killed in the cause. She eventually volunteers herself to become a suicide bomber in an assassination mission. As the plot moves forward, she discovers the importance of human life, after realizing she is pregnant. This causes Malli to question her determination to complete the mission.

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