By Mohamad Letfee Ahmad
KUALA LUMPUR, July 30 – Pahang-born writer and filmmaker, Dr. Razli Dalan will launch his second film based on the graphic novel titled Kantan launched on Saturday.
Razli, a doctor in the United Kingdom for the past 30 years said, he will produce and direct the entire film with the help of foreign crew members who have never been exposed to Malay culture.
“This graphic novel is a prelude to my second film, Kantan, with crew and collaborators from various countries who do not know about Malay culture, especially the Malay world which is so alien to them. Kantan is a genre of its own,” he said at the launch of the novel here Saturday.
Razli said the book was inspired from his dreams which he wrote until it became a novel filled with words and graphic illustrations.
Kantan is a dark imagined folklore of a half-human half-plant herbalist’s apprentice and his/her flawed human and nonhuman friends. Eleven-year old Kantan lives with his/her herbalist mentor Ibu Tanah in a remote village. Kantan is indebted to Ibu Tanah for rescuing him/her from the claws of his/her abusive father, Pak Tan. Kantan does not speak much, and misses his/her mother, Kesuma.
A young talented teacher from the city, Miss X arrives in the village one rainy evening, desperately trying to escape her rotten fate. Life in the idyllic village changes forever when, just after the teacher’s arrival, more and more of the villagers’ children go missing, apparently kidnapped.
According to Razli, Kantan, based on the novel will be produced at the end of this year.
His first film, Haruan (Snakehead, 2014) was screened at several international film festivals and won several awards.
–WE