Vinothraj's father died when Vinothraj was in class 4.[5] He had to drop out of school and work in the flower markets of Madurai as a daily wage labourer.[5] He went to Tiruppur at the age of 14 to work there in one of the town's textile factories. He joined a tutorial college and studied there for a couple of years. Eventually, seeing his fellow co-workers have their lives destroyed, he decided to leave the place and go to Chennai and work in cinema.[6]
Film career
Vinothraj was fascinated with cinema after seeing a film shooting when he was a child.[7] In Chennai he got a job as an employee at a DVD shop. He worked there for five years and during that time he used to talk to various film directors and assistant directors and others working in cinema.[8] He watched a lot of films, especially foreign films. He doesn't understand English and could not understand the subtitles in foreign language films, so eventually, he started watching visually-striking films that he could understand without subtitles.[9]
He got work as an assistant director in some short films in the Nalaiya Iyakkunar TV Program using the contacts he got from working in the DVD shop. Later, he met A. Sarkunam, the Tamil film director whose films include Kalavani and Vaagai Sooda Vaa. He then went on to work as an assistant director in the Tamil feature film Manjapai (2013), directed by Raghavan and produced by Sarkunam. After working in that film, he felt he needed to learn more and so, he joined the post-modernistic theatre troupe Manal Magudi and worked there as an assistant director for two years.[10]
Vinothraj made a short film, Subway, at this time on a shoe-string budget.[11] The idea for Pebbles was based on what his sister told him about her treatment by her husband. Her family could not pay a dowry, so her husband threw her out and she had to walk almost 13 kilometres to her mother's house.[12] The film was produced by Learn and Teach Productions. Vinothraj, along with his team, shot the film in around 37 days in the peak hours of sunlight during the noon as he wanted to capture the heat of the landscape.[13]
In 2024, Vinothraj shared that Chennai (formerly Madras) played a crucial role in shaping his creative journey, describing it as his "safe space." He credited the city with testing him, raising him, and influencing his filmmaking perspective.[14]
Filmography
Key
†
Denotes film or TV productions that have not yet been released
