Dileesh Pothan, Pauly Valsan's Chevittorma Selected For Busan International Film Festival
Leo Thaddeus' Malayalam film Chevittorma, starring Dileesh Pothan and Pauly Valsan, will have its World Premiere at the 31st Busan International Film Festival.
By ETV Bharat Entertainment Team
Published : September 1, 2026 at 9:00 PM IST
Hyderabad: Malayalam filmmaker Leo Thaddeus’ upcoming feature film Chevittorma, also titled The Soul Whisperer in English, is set to have its World Premiere at the 31st Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) in South Korea.
The film stars Malayalam actors Dileesh Pothan and Pauly Valsan in the lead roles. It has been selected for ‘A Window on Asian Cinema’, one of the festival’s prominent non-competitive sections that showcases new and notable films from across Asia.
The 31st Busan International Film Festival will be held from October 6 to 15, 2026, at the Busan Cinema Center in Busan, South Korea.
Set in the hills of Kerala, The Soul Whisperer is a drama that explores themes of death, faith, memory and redemption. The story follows Theresia, a woman known for sitting beside people who are close to death and whispering prayers believed to guide their souls peacefully.
She is called to the ancestral home of Varkichan, a powerful landlord who is lying unconscious after a sudden illness. However, as his family waits for his final moments, death does not arrive. As days pass, old tensions and buried memories slowly begin to surface, forcing the people in the house to confront their unresolved past.
Dileesh Pothan, who plays Varkichan in the film, said that the project was very different from the films he has previously been part of. “The Soul Whisperer is a very different experience from the films I have been part of before. Varkichan is a character who exists in a space between life and death, and much of what he carries is unspoken,” Pothan said.
He added that he was happy about the film receiving its World Premiere at BIFF, calling it an honour and encouragement for an independent Malayalam film.
Director and writer Leo Thaddeus said the film was an attempt to move away from the pace and conventions of mainstream cinema and explore a more intimate and patient form of storytelling.
“The film began with a simple question: what happens when death refuses to arrive, and a family is forced to remain in that moment of waiting? From there, the story became about memory, guilt, faith and the possibility of redemption,” he said.
The film marks Leo Thaddeus’ move into independent filmmaking after working in commercial Malayalam cinema.
The Soul Whisperer is produced by Stephen Zacharias, Aditya Grover, Harsh Agarwal, Lokan Raveendran, Jacob Zacharias and Sajan Balan. Apart from Dileesh Pothan and Pauly Valsan, the film also features Jeo Baby and other actors.
The 93-minute Malayalam-language film has cinematography by Swaroop Shanker, editing by Carlo Francisco Manatad and music by Iranian composer Milad Movahedi.
Notably, Pauly Valsan plays her first leading role in the film as Theresia, whose arrival at Varkichan’s ancestral home becomes the starting point for the family’s buried memories and secrets to slowly come to light.
