THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Asin is back in Kerala, her home state, and she will soon be busy with Bharath Bala’s multilingual “The 19th Steps” to be shot in the state later this year.
She has already started preparations and she wants to learn the tricky steps of Kalarippayattu, the southern state’s traditional martial art that is considered a male bastion.
Kamal Haasan plays an important role in the film, which also has popular Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano in the cast. Asin is ecstatic about the project.
“The film is being produced by Walt Disney and a good portion will be shot in Kerala,” the Kochi girl told reporters here. “This is going to be made in Tamil, Japanese and English and would commence in the second half of this year. For this I need to learn martial arts because the storyline demands it”.
In the film, written by MT Vasudevan Nair, the veteran Malayalam scriptwriter and Jnanpit winner, a Samurai warrior tries to conquer the ancient Indian martial art of Kalaripayattu and Kamal Haasan plays the role of an Indian martial arts guru.
Mammootty learned all the 18 steps of Kalarippayattu for MT’s “Oru Vadakkan Veera Gadha” and went on to win the national award for the best actor twenty years back. The new film deals with the mystical 19th step.
Asin (a confluence, according to her, of Sanskrit word “a” and English “sin” which together means “unblemished”) made her debut in the Malayalam film “Narendran Makan Jayakanthan Vaka” in 2001 when she was 15 years old.
Since then she has acted in both Tamil and Telugu films besides “Ghajini” that won her the Film Fare award.
