The Terrorist () is an Indian Tamil film directed by Santosh Sivan. The film portrays a period in the life of a 19-year-old woman, Malli (Ayesha Dharker), sent to assassinate a leader in South Asia through a suicide bombing. It stars Dharker, K. Krishna and Sonu Sisupal. Released in 1998, the film was shot in 15 days, with natural lighting, on a shoestring budget of ₹25 lakh (worth ₹2.2 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 (the reissued film's titles read "John Malkovich Presents"). Critic Roger Ebert has included the film in his series of "Great Movies" reviews. 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." The film that proved his mastery over the visual language was The Terrorist which has become a textbook of sorts for visual communication students, with scenes from the movie being used by Michael Chapman, Martin Scorsese’s cinematographer, to explain the tenets of cinematography during workshops. According to film critic Roger Ebert, it was a film ‘scripted by the camera’. 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." Plot The movie focuses on a 19-year-old woman named Malli (based on Kalaivani Rajaratnam), who joined a terrorist organization at a very young age after her brother was killed in the cause. She eventually volunteers herself to become a suicide bomber in an assassination mission. As the plot moves forward, she discovers the importance of human life, after realizing she is pregnant. This causes Malli to question her determination to complete the mission. Cast Ayesha Dharker as Malli Vishnu Vardhan as Thyagu Bhanu Prakash as Perumal K. Krishna as Lover Sonu Sisupal as Leader Anuradha Inspiration On 21 May 1991, Rajiv Gandhi was campaigning in favour of a UCPI candidate for the upcoming parliamentary elections in Tamil Nadu, when he was assassinated by a suicide bomber in the Indian town of Sriperumbudur, near Madras. The suicide bomber, Kalaivani Rajaratnam (popularly known by her assumed name Thenmozhi