Watch: Burj Khalifa lights up for release of Tamil movie ‘Navarasa’

Tamil anthology movie ‘Navarasa’ made a splash in Dubai as clips from its trailer lit up the iconic Burj Khalifa.

The event took place on August 4, a few days before the movie’s release on the streaming site, and the video for it was release on Netflix’s YouTube page on August 6.

“‘Navarasa’ is truly a cinematic marvel and a landmark moment of cultural pride for the Tamil entertainment industry, as the finest and most acclaimed talent has come together to bring this project to life,” read a description for the video, which has over 590,000 views so far.

The project is created by iconic filmmaker Mani Ratnam and director Jayendra Panchapakesan and features a massive all-star cast from South India such as Suriya, Vijay Sethupathi, Arvind Swami, Siddharth, Prakash Raj, Revathi and Nithya Menen.

The anthology is formed by nine short films based on the nine ‘rasas’ or human emotions — anger, compassion, courage, disgust, fear, laughter, love, peace and wonder. They are directed by Arvind Swami, Bejoy Nambiar, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Karthick Naren, Karthik Subbaraj, Priyadarshan, Rathindran Prasad, Sarjun and Vasanth Sai.

The movie is unique in that the cast and crew have worked on it for free and profits from it will be donated to members of the Film Employees Federation of South India that were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“While the spectacular creative community of Tamil cinema came together for this one-of-a-kind project, many leading icons of the industry graciously offered their services pro-bono contributing the proceeds from the films towards the well-being of film workers in Tamil cinema impacted by the pandemic,” the description on the video added.

Composers including AR Rahman, D Imman and Ghibran have also worked on ‘Navarasa’, which is out now on Netflix.