Kalainithan, thank you for taking the time to speak with Occhi Magazine. When you look back, what was the first moment you realised film wasn’t just something you enjoyed, but something you needed to build a life around—and what did it cost you to admit that to yourself?
I don’t know if there was one moment. As a child, I recognized that film encompassed everything I was excited by. It became difficult to imagine building a life where that wasn’t at the centre of it. There was never really another option for me.
The harder thing was probably accepting how uncertain that life could be. There isn’t a very clear path through filmmaking. But unfortunately, there wasn’t anything else I wanted to do. Or knew how to do. Once I understood that I was going to keep making films regardless, the uncertainty became something I had to learn to live with rather than a reason not to do it.
As a Tamil Canadian filmmaker, how have you learned to tell stories that are culturally specific without turning your community into a “setting” for outsiders—and what responsibility do you feel when you know your work may be read as representation?
I’m interested in particular people, particular families, and particular contradictions. The more specific they become, the more interesting they are to me. How they might be perceived by an outside audience isn’t really relevant at the writing stage.
As we go further into the filmmaking process, I’m certainly conscious that some audiences may encounter certain parts of Tamil culture for the first time through one of my films. I don’t take that lightly, but I also don’t think it should change how we approach the world of the film. Tamil audiences have spent our entire lives watching films rooted in cultures other than our own and finding our way into them. I think that trust can move in the other direction too.
Before the Canadian Film Centre, what did your earliest shorts and music videos teach you about your voice—especially the parts of your voice you were still trying to hide or soften?
I don’t think I’ve ever spent much time trying to define my own voice, and I don’t know that I was ever consciously trying to hide or soften parts of it either. I was mostly chasing things that interested me, telling stories that felt personal, fumbling and failing, and then moving on to the next one.
Looking back, I still don’t know what all of that taught me about my voice. But I learned a lot about myself as a filmmaker. I know I have a lot of conviction. I can be incredibly driven when I believe in something, and for better or worse, I tend to trust my instincts above everything else.
You’ve moved between music videos and narrative work. What did working in rhythm, performance, and image-first storytelling teach you about emotion that traditional screenwriting didn’t?
I’ve always viewed screenwriting as image-first storytelling. You’re not exactly putting images down on paper, but when it’s done well, you’re putting down words that conjure an image in the mind of the reader. And you’re doing so knowing that this is the first step of a longer journey that will eventually lead to capturing those images. My focus on writing never made me believe that meaning lives primarily in dialogue or plot. Screenwriting is for a visual medium, so I write knowing all of it matters.
Moving between music videos and narrative work, I’ve probably learned the most through editing. I was editing before I was directing, and music videos made me look for different ways images can accumulate meaning through rhythm. I bring that back to my narrative work, and vice versa.
Karupy began as a student project and then travelled to TIFF and into the Canadian Screen Awards conversation. What did that journey reveal to you about validation—what it gives, what it distorts, and what it can never replace?
Karupy was strange because it began in such a small context. I wasn’t making it with much expectation of what would happen afterward. Then suddenly the film had this life that extended far beyond us. That was incredibly meaningful because filmmaking can be so isolating while you’re making something. Having people connect with it confirms that the film was able to communicate what you hoped it would.
But validation is dangerous if you start working backwards from it. A festival responding to something doesn’t necessarily tell you what will work again. I’m proud of that film, but I don’t want to spend my career trying to make different versions of the thing that received that kind of recognition. Validation can give you confidence. It can’t tell you where to go next.
Returning to TIFF for a second time can feel like a homecoming or a new kind of pressure. What’s different in your body, your expectations, and your creative courage this time around—and what are you refusing to repeat?
It’s nice to be back at TIFF. I guess it does feel like a bit of a homecoming. But this is a new film, and a very different one from the last, so I’m mostly just curious to see how audiences respond to the work.
Beyond that, I’ll probably have less time to just enjoy watching films. Last year I got to really experience the festival and have fun with it. This year there’s also the new TIFF market, and alongside premiering a film, I’ll be part of the Directors’ Lab, and I’m deep in prep for my first feature. So I think it’ll be a much busier TIFF for me.
Honouring tradition can sometimes be used as a polite way of enforcing silence. In your own life, when have you seen tradition protect people, and when have you seen it become a tool that limits choice?
Growing up in a Tamil family, tradition was always present. There are parts of it that gave me a real sense of connection to family and culture. The problem is when tradition becomes immune to questioning because its age is treated as proof of its correctness. Then it can become a way of deciding what someone is allowed to want or who they’re allowed to become. I’m interested in challenging traditional ideas, but I don’t want to make films that simply reject tradition either. Something can be beautiful, meaningful, and worth preserving while still containing ideas that deserve to be challenged.
Till the Milk Runs Dry is set inside the highly regimented world of Bharatanatyam. What drew you to that environment specifically as a cinematic world, and what does its discipline reveal about control, devotion, and obedience?
I’ve always been fascinated by the amount of discipline it takes to become a dancer. You spend years training your body, and your life inevitably begins to form around it. That felt important for Madhu because dance isn’t just something she loves. It’s the life she has built for herself. So when that life is threatened, the question becomes how much of herself she’s willing to give to protect it.
Madhu’s pregnancy forces her to confront institutional expectations, devotion to craft, and autonomy. When you were shaping her story, what did you want to protect her from: judgement, simplification, or the audience’s need for an easy moral answer?
Probably simplification more than anything. I never wanted Madhu’s decision to feel obvious. If the institution around her were simply cruel and dance meant nothing to her, there wouldn’t really be a dilemma. Dance isn’t merely something being imposed on her. It’s something she has chosen again and again. I’m less concerned with whether someone agrees with Madhu than whether they recognize what each choice could cost her.
The film is described as lyrical and dreamlike. What can dream logic and poetic imagery express about womanhood and tradition that realism can’t—and were you ever afraid that subtlety would be misunderstood as avoidance?
It’s funny because words like “lyrical” or “dreamlike” were never really used when we were shooting the film. Those words come later, when the film is finished, and people are trying to communicate what kind of experience it offers an audience. Our focus was always on trying to authentically capture Madhu’s world through images, whatever that required.
I don’t necessarily think “dream logic” can express something that realism can’t. It can maybe access a different part of a character’s experience. The film begins from a relatively grounded place, but as the pressure on Madhu builds, the distinction between what she’s experiencing physically, emotionally, and almost subconsciously begins to blur. At certain points, a literal image would actually feel less truthful than an impossible one.
And yes, there’s always the possibility that subtlety or ambiguity will be read as avoidance. I think that’s a risk I’m comfortable with.
The title Till the Milk Runs Dry carries a sense of ritual, nourishment, and depletion. What is the emotional origin of that phrase for you, and how does it connect to the film’s questions about what women are expected to give until there’s nothing left?
The title came quite late, years after I had written the script. I think it stuck mainly because I liked that it could hold several meanings without settling into one. That, or I just couldn’t think of a better one.
What interests me is the question of sacrifice itself. Madhu is surrounded by different ideas about what she owes to her art, her body, her future and the people around her. The title became a way of holding all of that without answering it. How much of yourself can you give to something before that devotion begins to change what remains of you?
If the film is, in part, about permitting ourselves to question expectations, what do you hope a young dancer, a young woman, or a young artist takes away from Madhu’s choices—and what do you hope they feel empowered to question immediately after the credits roll?
I don’t think I need them to take a particular lesson from Madhu’s choices. If anything, I hope the film makes them question why certain choices are presented to us as inevitable.
As artists, we’re constantly told that seriousness requires sacrifice. Sometimes that’s true. Making something you care about can demand an enormous amount from you. But I think it’s worth questioning who decides which sacrifices are necessary and whether suffering automatically makes the devotion more meaningful.
More broadly, I hope someone leaves the film feeling that questioning something doesn’t mean you love it less. You can love an art form, a family, a culture, or a tradition deeply and still ask it to make room for you.
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