Santosh Sivan first gained attention as the cinematographer for Tamil filmmaker Mani Ratnam; with The Terrorist, Shivan moved into the director's chair, but also kept his cinematography duties-fortunately, as “on the basis of its images alone, The Terrorist is the most beautiful film from India in years” (Toronto International Film Festival). The film's title and premise-the teenage girl Malli, part of an anti-government guerrilla faction, is chosen to become a suicide bomber-certainly echoes today's news climate, but The Terrorist eschews action-film pyrotechnics to instead study the psychology of extremism. Revealing Malli's increasingly disorienting journey from “thinking bomb” to thinking human with a succession of exquisite, at times heart-rending images, The Terrorist was released in the United States thanks to John Malkovich, who proclaimed it his favorite film of the year.