My Death Certificate: A Powerful Short Film

A death certificate is a legal document that confirms a person’s death and provides key information about their passing. It needs to be given by a registered medical practitioner or a government civil registration office.

It is used for legal purposes such as closing the deceased’s estate, and keeping track of the demographic details of the population. A death certificate needs to be registered with the state records division after someone has died.

Given this definition, the title of the film ‘My Death Certificate’ is a misnomer because no one can produce or claim to produce their own death certificate. The short Tamil film, directed by Rajith C. R. is a scathing attack on the corrupt practices of fake death certificates that are produced for people who are much alive and kicking.

This is exactly the evil the film shows through a lovely short film. Can a live person be declared dead? This is what this film tries to point out.

Rajith C.R. Menon did his schooling in Abu Dhabi Model School, and continued his bachelor's degree in Mechanical engineering at St. Joseph's College of Engineering in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. He has also pursued a MBA from Sikkim Manipal University.

Rajith, began as an actor, made his film debut with ’Goal’. While watching the shooting of Kamal's Karutha Pakshikal, he was handpicked by Kamal’s assistant to to play the lead role in ’Goal’.Rajith received the "Asianet Best New Face Award" for this film.

He was lucky to work with all major filmmakers, such as I. V. Sasi, Joshy, Kamal, Rajasenan and T. K. Rajeevkumar. Rajith made his Tamil film debut in 2014 with Vikraman's ’Ninaithathu Yaaro’.

He made his directorial debut with the music video ‘Love Policy’. It went on to become one of the top trending music videos on YouTube. His second music video was a dedication to motherhood titled ‘Anbendraale Amma’ in Tamil and ‘With Love Maa’ in Hindi and had Zarina Wahab in the lead role.

Rajith’s debut as a director of feature films began with the Tamil short film ‘My Death Certificate’ which has won numerous awards and accolades at many Indian and international film festivals with unanimous critical response and reviews. This film won more than 50 awards and selections from national and international circuits including best short film, best director and best actress.

The film opens with officials from the Census department knocking at the door asking for details of how many family members live there. A male voice says “one.” But the officials’ voices are insistent.

So, they raise the question again and get the same answer. Seeing a woman beside the old man, they ask “who is she”? The answer they get is “I am a ghost,” in a female voice. There is no explanation or repeat of this scene in the rest of the film but the story is founded on this scene where no characters are presented on screen visually. You only see an old door in the frame and hear voices. An imaginative touch this.

The camera cuts to a huge wasteland with an old lady standing in its midst with a lost look on her face. A man approaches her and asks her to put her thumb impression on a blank paper for an “insurance policy.” She does it. We then find her shaken awake by her elderly husband who wishes her for her 60th birthday, adding that he has a present for her.

But before she can fetch it, he has a heart attack and is taken to a hospital where the doctor says that Mustafa, the husband, needs an open heart surgery and it will cost her Rs.3 lakhs. A helpful neighbour helps her locate the insurance agent.

But he cannot be traced now. Then, she collects her birthday gift of a gold chain from her home to pawn it at the local jeweller. But the helpful neighbour tells her to open a bank account and take a loan against the gold chain.

The bank manager is friendly and asks for her identification such as Aadhaar Card, Ration Card and Voters’ Identity card. But she, like thousands of poor and illiterate Indians, does not have any identity card to prove their existence and she is just one of them.

When the surprised manager asks her the name of her husband along with her name, she says that her husband’s name is Mustafa and her name is Sudha Ratnam, which is a subtle suggestion of the secularity even in the mindsets of these poor and illiterate people. When she is asked her religion, she simply says, “I have no religion.”

The bank manager opens his computer to search her identity through her husband’s credentials and informs her that one Sudha Rathnam, wife of one Mustafa, already had an account with the bank, but she died two months ago. The real Sudha Ratnam is shocked beyond belief.

Her husband, now out of crisis, comes home alive, but for all practical purposes Sudha Ratnam is dead, though she is alive. She is completely devastated and is now told by her good-natured young neighbour that this is a ‘business’ run by insurance agents who dupe poor and illiterate people who lack legal documents, by making them buy life insurance policies.

The agents then fake the identities of dead people with the names of those who they have already duped, and collect the insurance money and split it among themselves.

Sudha is just one of them. She cries and finally realises that she is one of those rare souls who is declared dead officially though she is physically alive.

The camera follows Sudha the protagonist, played by Revathi. She does a brilliant take on her role and she practically carries the entire film on her shoulders. The camera catches the varied expressions on her wrinkled face beautifully as she registers shock, surprise, sorrow, grief and finally, wonderment about her very existence.

The supporting actors are also very good. The locations are well-researched and according to Rajith C. R, “When I heard about these true stories, I wanted to bring this out within public knowledge as I feel this is something everyone should know about and that's exactly why I chose it to make people connect with it.”

This is not just a one-off story. In 2022, a Hindi feature film called ‘Kaagaz’, produced by Satish Kaushik, was streamed in January on ZEE5. It presented a fictionalised account of the 19-year-long struggle of Lal Behari (Pankaj Tripathi) who discovered, by chance, that he was recorded as ‘dead’ in official records everywhere.

Of the 10,000 ‘officially’ dead men and women in Uttar Pradesh till 1975, most belonged to Azamgarh, where this incident happened, completing the circle of its inherent irony. For most of these ‘dead’ people, life is reduced to a long struggle to prove that they are officially and actually alive. The journey is an uphill climb and takes years to reach the finishing point.

In 2007, award-winning filmmaker Joshy Joseph made a long documentary called ‘The Walking Dead’, which deals with ‘officially dead’ men of Azamgarh district, who are desperately trying to prove that they are alive. They were declared dead because their relatives and family members wanted to grab their land and this was the easiest way to do that.

All three films journey through this scam of exploiting the poor and the illiterate who do not possess identification documents, by drawing out life insurance policies and then declaring them dead even when they are alive and pocketing the proceeds of the insurance money.

Each film is well-made and is able to get across its message from a different perspective. They will go into the archives as educational, informative and enriching films.

‘My Death Certificate’ is not an exception. The way the director has put together the details like acting, backdrop, technical innovations to tell a powerful story is remarkable. That the film has been screened across many film festivals and won many awards comes as no surprise.

Given the socio-political environment we are living within today, the day is not far when every other person may have to look for a death certificate even when alive.