You wouldn’t find many directors as calm and composed as director Sasi before the release of a film. That Nooru Saami — starring Vijay Antony, Swastika and Ajay Dhishan — has come out the way he envisioned, brings him peace. “I am relieved and happy that I made the film I wanted to make,” he says. This is Sasi’s first release in seven years. “I made a film called Nooru Kodi Vaanavil with Harish Kalyan and Siddhi Idnani; however, the film remains unreleased due to some reasons and will come out in a couple of months.” He confesses he hasn’t been the most consistent filmmaker around; in a career spanning over 28 years, Sasi has made just eight films, Nooru Saami being his ninth. This is why he accepts that his brand of filmmaking hasn’t always been in the limelight as much as one wishes. I remind Sasi of a group photo that director Gautham Vasudev Menon shared last August — it features some of the most acclaimed Tamil directors, Mani Ratnam, Shankar, Mysskin, Gautham, N Lingusamy, Balaji Sakthivel, Nelson, and Vasantha Balan, and wedged in the centre of this array of talent is Sasi. Calling themselves a group of 13 filmmakers who meet as friends, Sasi reminisces how it all started during the COVID-19 pandemic.