Ragnar may not know he’s the star of a short film, but the young puppy has already won hearts as one of the unlikely leads of Oolai, short filmmaker Poorani Giridharan’s work, which is all set to be screened at the Chennai International Short Film Festival from July 30 to August 2. While the sound of a dog’s howl triggers the events in the film, Oolai looks beyond the superstition surrounding it to examine how fear, belief and perception shape the way people respond to the unknown. For Poorani, the idea was born out of real-life experiences she witnessed growing up in Sundarapuram, Coimbatore.
“I grew up seeing people shut their doors whenever a dog howled. I even know of an incident where a family closed every door and window because a dog was howling while a newly married couple was visiting. There were around 50 or 60 people inside the house, all sweating in the heat because no one wanted to open the doors. ”
Her research on the subject also revealed that similar beliefs exist across cultures. “I realised the superstition wasn’t unique to us. I have relatives in the United States who say people there refer to it as ‘wolf howling’ and also consider it a bad omen. They have simply localised the belief in their own way. Even in English horror films, dogs howl before ghosts or supernatural events appear. It’s a belief that exists in different parts of the world.”
Despite the film dealing with superstition, Poorani says Oolai is less about the supernatural and more about the power of human thought. “I’ve always believed that our thoughts and beliefs are powerful. I’m not approaching this from a superstitious point of view. I simply believe that choosing positive thoughts over negative ones can influence the way we experience life.”
Casting the film’s canine star, Ragnar, proved to be one of the biggest challenges. “We struggled to find the right dog. The trained film dogs were too aggressive for what I wanted, but I needed a four or five-month-old puppy because the audience had to believe that the young girl in the film was genuinely raising it.”
After an extensive search, she remembered a social media reel she had saved featuring an adorable puppy. Being a dog lover herself, she contacted the owner, who agreed to let Ragnar be part of the film. “He performed brilliantly. Some scenes were completed in a single take, while others required a bit of guidance from my assistant director off-camera. We shot through the night for two days, but we always worked around Ragnar’s comfort. If he was hungry, we stopped. If he was asleep, we never woke him up. We treated him like a child.”
The story itself had been with her for several years. Written in 2019, Oolai took seven years to reach the screen. “I narrated the script to Badava Gopi sir in 2019, and it has taken all these years for it to become a reality. Finding a location for a short film in Chennai was surprisingly difficult. At one point I felt making a feature film would have been easier. We eventually canned the portions in a shooting house, but we ensured nothing looked artificial. The art department worked meticulously to create a natural setting.”
Reflecting on the making of Oolai, she credits actor and filmmaker Badava Gopi as one of the film's strongest supporters. He was the first person she narrated the script to and continued encouraging her throughout the project's long development. "He kept asking me, 'When are we finally making this film?' He contributed ideas throughout the process—not just for the performances but also for the posters and the overall presentation. He put in an extraordinary amount of effort, and I genuinely don't think the film would have reached this stage without him."
Poorani explains that nearly 80 per cent of the film was planned with the cinematographer Vithagan Raaj Suryan before production began. “We spent a great deal of time discussing the compositions and visual language. The remaining 20 per cent happened instinctively on set.”
After years of holding on to the idea and overcoming several challenges to bring it to life, Poorani is now excited to finally share Oolai with audiences.
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