PETALING JAYA, May 21 — The festive season usually brings with it a whole slew of short films or TV commercials engineered to pull at our heartstrings.

This Hari Raya, a film-maker came up with a short film that is completely left of centre.

The focus? The often ignored RM1 note!

Kelana Jaya-based production studio Graph Studio captured the "feelings" of the blue note in its 3.57-minute video uploaded on Facebook earlier today.

It starts with the blue note complaining about how Malaysians often overlook its existence.

"Kita hidup dalam dunia plastik, dunia yang menilai orang berdasarkan warna kulit. Bagaimana pula dengan aku? (We live in a plastic-world, a world which judges others based on skin colour. What about me?),” the voice-over said.

The climax comes halfway through the film when it reveals that RM1 notes only matter during Syawal -- the day which marks the end of Ramadan and the first day of Hari Raya.

Director Derrik Yaw, 33, said the idea for the short film came about three years ago.

"I was having a chat with a close friend of mine Mo Nazmi (creative director of the movie) and he told me how he usually waits until the very last day to change his money for the festive season.

"After several discussions, we decided that it’ll make a great story,” he said.

The duo tried to sell the idea to the banks but there were no takers.

"After nearly three years of trying to sell it we gave up and decided that we should try to pull some strings and produce it with a small budget.”

Derrik describes the film as dark humour and said there was a subtext about gender discrimination as well.

"We wanted to address this issue for quite long, but could never really come up with a short film to display it in a nice way.

"There are two sides to a coin and I’m glad the film turned out just the way I wanted it to, a few funny twists with hidden messages,” he said.