The Confession: Nana Patekar`s next with Ananth Mahadevan gets a release date

Filmmaker Ananth Mahadevan may have had two releases this year, but he isn’t quite done. After The Storyteller and Phule, the director is readying The Confession for a December release. The Nana Patekar-starrer is based on the 1966 Madatharuvi case in which Father Benedict Onamkulam was accused of killing Mariyakutty, a widow.

Mahadevan, who shot the film in Goa in late 2022, says that the case had intrigued him from the time he first read about it. With The Confession, he wanted to examine the story from the priest’s perspective. “It was a sensational case that happened in Kerala. Father Benedict became the first priest in India to be condemned to death. The catch was that the priest had a confession by Mariyakutty, but bound by his faith, he would not reveal it in the court. What happens after [his initial conviction] forms the film’s crux,” says the director.

Ananth Mahadevan

With the shoot wrapped up in December 2022, The Confession was to be Patekar’s first theatrical release after being accused of sexual harassment by Tanushree Dutta in the #MeToo movement in 2018. Mahadevan says the release got delayed because of his busy schedule. “After completing The Confession, I focused on The Storyteller’s release, made Phule and Past Tense, and got busy with their post-production. I did not want to rush with this film, but treat it sensitively as it required a delicate balance. We want a theatrical release because I shot this film on a large scale, [depicting] the beauty and vastness of Goa with the churches, beaches, and heritage homes.”

On the silver screen

The Madatharuvi case, in which a priest was convicted of murder by a trial court and later acquitted by the Kerala High Court, has been explored in two Malayalam films — ‘Mynatharuvi Kolakase’ (1967), and ‘Madatharuvi’ (1967).