South Indian filmmaker Rajesh Pillai died due to liver problem at the age of 42. His latest film Vettah, starring Kunjacko Bobban, Manju Warrier and Indrajith, released recently. The director was admitted to hospital several times during the course of making the film, contracting pneumonia while Vettah was in the final sound mixing stage. He had been suffering from liver cirrhosis for a long time.

Pillai had been adviced to go in for a liver transplant but asked by the doctors to reduce weight first. The director chose to wait for his film’s release instead, which aggravated his condition.

Rajesh hit the headlines with his film Traffic in 2011 which was then remade in other South Indian languages while its Hindi remake was made by the director himself. Many consider Traffic to be a path-breaking film in Malayalam cinema, given its face-paced thriller format. Rajesh has directed five movies.

About the Movie – Traffic 

• Traffic is a 2011 Malayalam language Indian thriller film written by brothers Bobby and Sanjay and directed by Rajesh Pillai.
• . It is widely regarded as one of the defining movies of the Malayalam New Wave.
• A multi-narrative thriller that intertwines multiple stories around one particular incident,Traffic is inspired from an actual event that happened in Chennai.
• Owing to its critical and commercial success,Traffic was remade into Tamil as Chennaiyil Oru Naal, in Kannada as Crazy Star and to be remade in Hindi cinema.