v.t. nayani (nine-knee) 🎬👩🏽‍🏫✨

@filmindependent , your faith in me over this past year has literally changed the course of my career. i'm not being hyperbolic -- i am not the same artist i was before your support started blessing my little big life. 💚 i've been receiving the Fi newsletter for over a decade, hoping and wishing that one day i would be part of this community. and now i'm living that vision come to fruition. and it is even better than i imagined. 🙏🏽 from championing our original tv series, to now investing in and nurturing my episodic directing work, your support of my development as an artist is unmatched and palpable. you've gifted me the space to grow and learn from the best in the business. thank you @ashnflores , @deaelisa44 , @acclee , and the entire Fi team! thank you to all of our mentors and guides! and thank you and congrats to my incredible fellow fellows, @versailles73 , @whatsfordunch , @mxlauramoss , @sheridan.odonnell , and Shuchi Talati! 💐 what a privilege and pleasure it is to be part of this year's episodic directing lab. and after being a fellow in two Fi labs now, i'll take it as an affirmation that an indie #spiritawards win is possible one day soon! (claiming it!) 🥹🫶🏽🙏🏽 #filmindependent

it's deadline official. 🥹 i've been sitting quietly on this one for a month now and keeping it close to heart -- largely because silence was required (lol), but also because it felt overwhelming and scary and panic-inducing to finally share something so personal. in many ways, this series is based on one of the most painful parts of my life. so naturally, we turned to laughter. 🙃 thank you to @filmindependent for believing in and supporting SHAME. and thank you with all my heart to my co-pilot and dear friend @pizza_rain , for working with me to re-imagine my grief and laugh in new (and needed ways), and building this absurd, heartfelt, and all too real story together for the screen. i'm so happy we found each other on the bird app. 😅🤙🏽 more to come. 💜 #filmindependent

last night, my feature directorial debut @thisplacefilm premiered to a sold out audience at #TIFF22. 🥺 and there was a standing ovation at the end. 🥹 to have this moment in my hometown, with the world visiting, was surreal and beyond my imagination (and i have a very active one!). i am still in awe, still processing, still floating, and still shook. there's much more to say and still three screenings left during the festival. but thank you to everyone who came through and showed out - cast, crew, and community! thank you to everyone who stopped me to share your stories and resonances - i am still thinking about each of you. the cinema felt full of palpable love and what a sacred way to start sharing this story of love with the world. 💜 🙏🏽 Dress: @selkie 🙏🏽 Styling: @catcalica 🙏🏽 Hair & Makeup: @alisonsharp

i have officially finished my first year of my phd and all of my coursework! 🥲 and i got straight a's for the first time in my life. ⭐ no more driving three hours back and forth, from toronto to kingston, twice a week - the real win! 😅 i am celebrating by staying my butt at home, watching all the shows and films on my list, and enjoying my rest. ☺️ grateful to my beloveds who got me here and got me through. i am because of you. 🥹🙏🏽💞

i could never abandon my heart's calling as an artist. this past season, i've only carved out a new path that brings me closer to my centre, with more clarity and care. this world of work we create within is not sustainable for most people, if any of us - in more ways than we can count. the realities of living with chronic illness have asked me to move slower, and to pay closer and more careful attention to the exhaustion of hiding sickness, the labour of appearing "well", and both the quiet and loud violence of infrastructures based on extraction. especially creative ones. returning to school, to continue my work as a researcher, offered me an invitation to reconsider and reimagine everything. so as i continue to write, to perform, to direct, to create in every way i dream of, reaching beyond my grasp as always, i also now spend my days studying and researching and exploring how care-centred approaches can transform our production infrastructures. how we can create care infrastructures for creative production, which challenge the capitalist paradigms that make people sick and exacerbate what so many are already struggling with in our bodies. filmmaking can be done differently. and it should be. at some point, all of us will be sick in some way. this is the nature of being human. so how do we create a world and spaces of work where we are supported, nourished, and cared for, rather than continuously punished for the ever-changing realities of our bodies? this is my work too now. and it will be for the rest of my life. because i have chronic illness and i am a storyteller, and those two facts are inseparable. vulnerability has always been a portal towards more freedom in my life. and softness has been a mighty and miraculous antidote against the poisons and pains of this world. i deeply, wholly, truly believe we can continue building softer, gentler, care-based futures for filmmaking and all other arts practices. so as i continue to create and reimagine how i do this work as an artist, i will also be trying to contribute to the world-making work of those who have already been dreaming of and building better for our collective futures. 💖

one day, i will write about how my body gave out on me at the end of 2025. in ways unexpected but not unprecedented. i was sick in ways i could not hide or perform "normalcy" around. and careful disclosure then gifted me clarity and acceptance. i have long found it difficult to admit that i have faced chronic illness all my life. especially within this world we inhabit. my earliest memory in this life is walking into an operating room. that moment still follows me, never letting me forget: i have been sick all of my life. i could say i don't know how i made it through. this past season, or all of the ones before that. but that would not be true. because i do know. love. love made it possible. anbu. paasam. nesam. irakkam. thozamai. parivu. (i'm learning tamil!) love held me and carried me and showed up for me in ways i didn't even know how to ask for, or that i believed i could even ask for. my whole world has tilted and i have reoriented where i start from. or rather, i have doubled down on what i have always believed to be the place for me: softness. gentle, sweet, tender, loving softness. care is the foundation i dream of building new worlds upon. the care of my beloveds showed me what that looks and feels like. as always, love continues to be the promise of all possibility in my life. just as Amma and Appa taught me in praxis. thank you to my beloveds, especially those gifted to me by birth and blood. the universe really did her big one when she gifted me my kudumbam. i don't know where i'd be without them, but unquestionably nowhere nearly as beautiful nor blessed. 💕

Part 3 of 3: V.T. Nayani @_9knee names her dream roles and @sussvarman asks about dream guys Catch Suku in the short film Midnight Murungai. Interviewed, shot & edited by @sussvarman [ mathilda, nora ephron, when harry met sally, christopher walken, raymond ablack, movie characters, acting, actors, indie film, creatives, toronto artists, scarborough, tamil women, tamil artists, hollywood, new wave ]

V.T. Nayani @_9knee sits down with @sussvarman to discuss her acting sidequest. Catch her on-screen debut as Suku in Midnight Murungai. [ acting, actors, indie film, creatives, toronto artists, scarborough, tamil women, tamil artists, hollywood, new wave ]

going to take a break from this space, because social media sabbaticals are always healthy. but before i do, i wanted to pause and share my deep gratitude for the sweetest @rambam_films and the entire @midnight_murungai team. 🥹 i am so wholly grateful to the entire cast and crew for everything. 🙏🏽 over a year ago, i decided to take a leap of faith and audition for the role of SUKU. it felt right, so i said fuck it to my doubts and why not to my curiosity. on-screen acting was something i'd never done, despite years spent on stage. three auditions later, and with the support of my dearest @malaikahennie , i booked the job. and then i had the wondrous privilege of playing alongside @priya.guns (who you know was one of the leads in my first feature @thisplacefilm !) and @sumusathi (who i have known in community for many years). it all felt so serendipitous and sacred. i never dreamed i'd book the first role i auditioned for and that we'd now be planning to film the feature version of Ramiya's brilliant and singular script. to play a lead role in a coming-of-age comedy by and about tamil women, which centers joy and celebrates chaotic hijinks, is so special and softening. we don't see enough of how funny our people really are, especially in a city like toronto, where there are hundreds of thousands of us! lol. and on a somber note, especially for a community like ours that has experienced the grief we have. we deserve comedy too, because we certainly know how to laugh in spite of it all. this past week, we just had our world premiere and next we will screening the film as part of @parvaikal , in a programme celebrating and centering all tamil filmmakers! i never thought i'd see my chubby face blown up on the big screen at the @revuecinema ! (where i just saw THELMA & LOUISE on the big screen for the first time a few weeks ago!) i am always in awe and ever grateful for how courage has continued to beget such beauty in this lifetime. taking a risk is always worth it, when you feel called to something. i am thankful for how i bet on myself, especially when i am most scared to. what has come has always been nothing short of magic. okay, bye for now. ✌🏽💚🙏🏽✨

on feeling and being clumsy, writing for myself, and "joyspotting". thank you @alex_elle 🙏🏽 and thank you @najlanubyanluv for your words of kindness and affirmation last night. 💖

@amanda_parris introduced me to her as i was on the precipice of my politicization. she brought this book into my life, and everything changed -- in my heart, mind, and spirit. suddenly, there were the exact words for all the things that i hadn't possessed before. i've had multiple copies over the past fifteen years, each one lent out and never returned. as it was meant to be. and i always picked up another, read it again, and held it gently while knowing it may become someone else's one day. i will continue this tradition, in honour of her. as dear @yabablay wrote, "another lighthouse for liberation has dimmed." and indeed: "she will never be gone. may she never be forgotten." 🤍🕊️

a week of seeing things i imagined, and witnessing unimagined dreams quietly come true, and sweet reunions shared with beloveds, and warm hugs all along the way, and the moments in passing preserved in memory alone, and lots of mirror photos, and 0.7x selfies (fun!), and the joy of millennial collaging, and private cheers and tears, and lots of belly laughs over yummy food, and sweet treat breaks in between the madness, and managing so many human things at once, and early mornings spent quietly meditating and praying, and lots of staring at the sun and the night sky, and lots and lots of walking, and an eclipse that wiped me out, and dancing impromptu by myself in random places, and the invaluable beauty of the unexpected, and showing up for myself no matter what, and remembering what the past 15 years have prepared me for, and making things happen with intention and nourishment and care, and letting life flow as it will, and surrendering to the process and the praxis and the purpose, and honouring that my vulnerability and my softness are my superpowers, and staying heart-centered as much as i can, and being tender and wearing my heart on my bell-sleeve, and being a real-life mermaid who keeps swimming and dreaming and believing no matter what, and letting myself continuously become the woman i am meant to be. i'm proud of myself. i really am. and i'm not ashamed to say that now. i earned this version of me. i wish i didn't have to in the ways that i did. but i did. and i will not let her down. i will not let myself down. i know what it took to get here and continuously arrive. and i will continue to arrive. 🤍 (a special thank you to @aishafairclough_ for your gentle and affirming words on sunday, before we parted. i did not expect them and the tears came fast. you were my angel that day. truly. you helped deliver me back to myself and come home to my body. and with certainty, you prepared me for this week in ways i didn't understand until now. i am so deeply grateful. 💐)