Attracted to cultural themes: Santosh Sivan

Celebrated cinematographer-director Santosh Sivan, who revisits the pages of history once again with his multi-starrer 'Urumi', says he is attracted to themes which deal with conflict and cultural clashes.The director, who has previous made period films like 'Asoka' and 'Before the Rains', says he researched for a long time and then decided to make the film on Vasco Da Gama's visits to India.

"I won't say that I like historical dramas but I am attracted to the themes that talk about cultural clashes and land conflict. This is why I based my children's film 'Tahaan' in Kashmir but it is difficult to make a film like 'Urumi',which has a huge canvas. I decided to make the film in Malayalam because it happened there. I always thought that the story was very Indian," Sivan told PTI on the sidelines of Mumbai Film Festival.

The Telugu and Malayalam versions of the movie have been released while Tamil version will be in theatres soon.The director is also keen to take the film to the Hindi audience. The film has also released in Japan and was selected at Busan International film festival.

The film stars big names like Prithviraj, Genelia D'souza, Prabhu Deva, Vidya Balan, Amole Gupte and Alex O'Neil."When Vasco Da Gama landed here, western people thought that he was a discoverer but if you go deeper into his log books and notebooks you will realize that he was very harsh like all the colonial rulers. He burnt ships from Mecca and people here did not react to him very kindly," Sivan says.