This was a surprise: Liar’s Dice director on her film’s selection as India’s official Oscar entry

“I had cut the umbilical cord as soon as it premiered in Sundance earlier this year,” says the Kochi-based director who has moved on to her next project, a Malayalam film she is currently writing. “This was a surprise, especially since the films it was competing with are also very competent.”

Ever since it’s premiere in January this year at 2014 Sundance Film Festival, where it was selected in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition, the film has charted its own course. Produced by JAR Entertainment, it has already travelled to 35 film festivals and bagged two National Awards this year. Thapa, the film’s protagonist, won Best Actor (Female) and Rajeev Ravi, also Mohandas’s husband, received the Best Cinematographer honour.

A road movie, Liar’s Dice is a comment on the increasing rural-to-urban migration. “People from villages and small towns are migrating to faraway cities every day in search of work. But very often they never return; sometimes their families don’t even find out what happened to them,” says Mohandas, who started her career as a child artiste in Malayalam cinema and eventually worked as a leading lady opposite big stars including Mohanlal.

The film opens in Chitkul, a picturesque village in Himachal Pradesh, that is home to a tribal community. After her construction worker husband goes missing, Kamla, the protagonist, embarks on a journey to Shimla and then to Delhi’s difficult, industrial landscape, in search for him. She is accompanied by her three-year-old daughter and her lamb. Along the way, she meets an army deserter on the run, who offers to aid the search.

The story, sometimes grim and at other times hopeful, has been beautifully captured by Ravi, who lends the scenes a part-dreamy-part-dreary feel.

Completed in January this year, Liar’s Dice is being released in India by PVR under its Director’s Rare initiative. The film released in a few theatres across Kerala last week and will hit the cinema halls in Pune this Friday. “We are taking the city-by-city approach as we don’t view a wide release for an independent film like this as conducive,” says the director. However, the team is aware that the recent announcement as India’s Oscar entry may draw attention to the film. “We are prepared for that and are keeping our fingers crossed.”