The Terrorist is a 1999 Indian Tamil-language film directed by Santosh Sivan. The film portrays a period in the life of a 19-year-old woman, Malli, sent to assassinate a leader in South Asia through a suicide bombing. It stars Ayesha Dharker. Released in 1999, the film was shot in 15 days, with natural lighting, on a shoestring budget of â¹25 lakh (worth â¹2.2 crore in 2021 prices).
The film won a number of awards at international film festivals. Actor John Malkovich first saw the film at the 1998 Cairo International Film Festival and subsequently adopted the film as a kind of post-facto executive producer. Critic Roger Ebert has included the film in his series of "Great Movies" reviews.
The movie focuses on a 19-year-old woman named Malli (based on Kalaivani Rajaratnam), who joined a terrorist organisation at a very young age after her brother was killed in the cause. She volunteers herself to become a suicide bomber in an assassination mission. As the plot moves forward, she discovers the importance of human life, after realising she is pregnant. This causes Malli to question her determination to complete the mission.
While campaigning in the 1991 Indian general election, former prime minister of India Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a female suicide bomber, Kalaivani Rajaratnam. Rajaratnam was affiliated with the Black Tigers, a cadre of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Film critic Roger Ebert noted that Santosh Sivan "was inspired by the assassination of the Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. But in the movie, no country is identified, no name is attached to her target, and no ideology or religion is attached to her movement."
Ebert concludes his review with the following line: "Every time I see the film, I feel a great sadness, that a human imagination could be so limited that it sees its own extinction as a victory." According to Ebert, it was a film âÂÂscripted by the cameraâÂÂ.
Says Sivan: "One day I got a call from Samuel Lee Jackson who was interested to cast the heroine of The Terrorist, Ayesha, in a Hollywood film."
The reissued film's titles read "John Malkovich Presents" after Malkovich took a liking for the film.