'Blues' tells the story of an aspiring filmmaker who faces suppression in the film industry. Photo: Handout
The award-winning Malaysian Tamil film Jagat is back in the cinemas, a decade after it was first released.
“When we made Jagat, we set it as a period film set in the 1990s, you won’t know it was shot in 2015.
“Even after a decade, Jagat remains as raw and relevant as the day it was first released. It tells the real stories of ordinary Malaysians, their struggles, dreams and resilience and I believe these truths still deserve to be seen on the big screen,” Jagat’s director Sun-J Perumal said.
The re-release of Jagat offers both new viewers and long-time fans the chance to experience the critically acclaimed film on the big screen once again.
It also sets the stage for its sequels, Macai which will hit cinemas on Nov 13 while Blues on Dec 4.
“I’m thrilled that audiences, old and new, will get to reconnect with these characters as we open the next chapters of the Jagat Multiverse. The three movies are inter-related, hence why Jagat re-relase is necessary,” the director said.
The term “jagat” is a Tamil slang for jahat, which means bad in Bahasa Malaysia.
In 2016, Jagat was named Best Malaysian Film at the 28th Malaysia Film Festival, with Sun-J receiving the award for Best Director. The film remains the first and only Tamil-language film to win Best Malaysian Film.
Looking back, the 45-year-old filmmaker who hails from Parit Buntar, Perak, said immediately after Jagat, he began to work on a Malay film.
“I wanted to make it according to my style but I was not able to do so, so I left the script and went on to work on another project.
“But that too did not work out. Then the idea for Blues came about, after that Macai. I began developing the scripts concurrently.
He shot Blues and Macai in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
Sun-J said the main challenge for him as a filmmaker is getting people to believe in his vision.
“Getting people to watch a Malaysian Tamil film is difficult. I think the ecosystem is not ready and so it remains a huge challenge for local filmmakers, especially independent ones,” he said.
He added that as an independent director, he was involved in every task in filmmaking, big and small.
“In the big studios, you have people to do specific tasks so you can concentrate on making films.
“But here, we have to do everything from filming, to marketing and distributing, from the beginning to the end.”
He added that he was grateful for the funding support from Mycreative Ventures, the government-backed investment arm dedicated to supporting Malaysia’s creative industries as well as Finas for Macai and Blues.
In Jagat, Appoy (played by Harvind Raj), is a boy who grows up watching his hard-working father determined to keep him on the straight path while being drawn to the criminal lifestyle of his uncle, a henchman for a local gang.
Macai and Blues explore the alternative paths Appoy would have taken had he listened to his father or followed the footsteps of his uncle.
“Back in 2018, my producer P. Sivanantham and I began to see how deeply the effects of drugs were seeping into the Malaysian Indian community.
“While Jagat explored the scars of post-colonialism, I felt compelled to confront a more urgent and contemporary reality: the presence of drugs in our lives, our streets and our families.
“From that awareness, Macai was born. Set against the backdrop of a fictional border city, Lingapura, the film follows the journey of a drug mule,” he said.
Meanwhile Blues tells the story of an aspiring filmmaker who faces suppression in the film industry. Karthi (played by Karnan Kanapathy) is a disgruntled assistant on commercial productions. He works hard to create an honest, personal film script, but his project is without industry backers.
Asked if Blues was based on his life story, Sun-J laughed.
“Probably,” was all he would offer.
