CINEMA & DOCUMENTARIES

“Dreaming of Words” by Nandan (Documentary with Greek subtitles)

Dreaming of Words is a 2021 Indian documentary film directed and produced by Nandan.The documentary is about Njattyela Sreedharan, a fourth standard drop-out, who compiled a dictionary connecting four major Dravidian languages. Travelling across four states and doing extensive research, he spent twenty five years making the multilingual dictionary. This unique dictionary offers a comparative study of Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. ‘Dreaming of Words’ traces Sreedharan’s life, work, love for languages and the struggles to get the dictionary published. The film also explores the linguistic and cultural diversity in India.

‘Dreaming of Words’ had its world premiere at the International Mother Language Day Celebrations 2021 organized by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and the Ministry of Education (India) in partnership with UNESCO.

It was an official selection at the DC South Asian Film Festival, RapidLion Film Festival and Micheaux Film Festival. It also won a National Film Award.
It was screened at the annual convention of the Modern Language Association and the annual conference of the Linguistic Society of America in January 2022.

Watch the documentary (with Greek subtitles):

Producer and Director : Nandan
Cinematographer : Surjith S Pai
Editor : Sreevalsan RS Sound
Designer : Akshay Vaidya
Music Composer : Arun Alat Cast : Njattyela Sreedharan, PK Pokker, KP Mohanan, Seetharam Master, Usha NP, KK Ramesh