With 16 years of experience in the film and entertainment business, more than 125 films in Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi and Kannada to her credit a national award for best supporting actress for 'Devar Magan', Revathi has come a long way since she was introduced as a gawky girl by Bharatiraja in his film 'Mann Vasanai'. The actress has put all her experience in the film she has directed named 'Mitr, My Friend'. The film is in English, and Revathi is planning to dub it in other languages.

The film is about Lakshmi a small town girl from Tamil Nadu, who gets married to Prithvi a North Indian, born and raised in America. Lakshmi's life revolves round her husband and daughter Divya. Divya grows up and has her own life; the cultural differences between mother and daughter becoming more obvious as the years go by. Prithvi is too busy to understand her loneliness. Lakshmi decides to live for herself, explore life and find her own identify.

Playing Lakshmi is Shobhana who comes to the Tamil screen after a long gap. And Prithvi is Nasir Abdullah, the popular model from Mumbai. Why Abdullah? "Because he fits the bill. I wanted someone who could play a North Indian brought up in America, convincingly," says, Revathi. Preeti Vissa, trained in classical dance in America, plays the 18-year-old Divya. Mathew Philip and Blake Ormsby are also in the cast.

What is striking about the film is that it has an all women technical crew. "It was not planned that way, it just happened," says Revathi. "Priya, who had worked as assistant to Maniratnam and Suhasini, came to us with a story for a T.V serial. After reading it, my husband Suresh felt that it would make a good subject for a film. It was then that we decided to produce the film and I thought I could try my hand at direction. We got Prabha Koda to do the costumes. It was then that we realised that we could have an all women technical crew. We searched around and found Fowzia Fathima who was assisting P.C. Sriram. We got Bhavatharini to score the music for us. Sudha Kongara pens the dialogue and the lyrics are by Thamarai. In our crew only editor Beena is an experienced person. She has edited two of M.T. Vasudevan's films, and has won the 'Best editor' award of the Kerala State Govt. Vasundhara Das sings the songs".

And how was it working with the all women crew? Says Revathi, "Women are more organized and pay attention to details. In fact, they are too organized. We shot most of the film in San Francisco. As we reached there the weather suddenly changed and it started to rain. Everything had been so perfectly organized. But then we changed our plans and schedules and everything went on without any hassle." Revathi says that her husband Suresh Menon was her constant buffer. "Suresh was very supportive and had a lot of confidence in me. I wouldn't have coped without him."

'Mitr, My Friend' is to be released in June. And then Revathi will decide her future course of action.