Change of script in God's own country, and she's liking It

Time of India

10-05-2025

The Malayalam film that has been most in the news in 2025 so far is
Prithviraj Sukumaran
's
L2: Empuraan
. This conventionally masala-packed drama mounted on a massive scale is a contrast to the understated, slice-of-life narratives that govern the nationwide perception of
Malayalam cinema
. Empuraan's incredible political courage, for which it made headlines, is the one quality it shares with the low-key Malayalam films embraced until now by pan-India audiences.
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In the last few months, some fine examples of this trademark courage and low-key storytelling have been on the festival and awards circuit. These include Fasil Muhammed's
Feminichi Fathima
(Feminist Fathima), Appuram (The Other Side) directed by
Indu Lakshmi
, and Sivaranjani's Victoria that are also part of a marginal but discernible shift in recent years towards filling a glaring gap in Malayalam cinema - of the shortage of female directors and stories about women.
That statement might confuse North Indian readers who have grown to admire Malayalam cinema's persistent exposes of patriarchy and have been asking why present-day Hindi cinema fails to replicate the thoughtfulness and acute observation powers of Uyare, Sara's, The Great Indian Kitchen, Ullozhukku, and similarly insightful contemporary Malayalam films. Bear with me.
Feminichi Fathima is set in a Muslim home where the wife is burdened by her joyless, despotic, fanatical husband's diktats. Appuram deals with a non-conformist nuclear Hindu household that has broken away from an upper-caste extended family, which disapproves of a woman's decision to marry a man of her choice and considers menstruating women impure.
Victoria's eponymous Christian heroine navigates her job at a beauty parlour with clients from varied socio-economic backgrounds, while at home, her father reacts violently to her inter-community romance. These are entertaining films that examine patriarchy with the depth and fearlessness Malayalam cinema is known for.
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This is the great irony of the Malayalam film industry: when it dives into gender-related issues, it does so better than any other film industry in the rest of India, and takes up subjects that most filmmakers elsewhere in the country either have not noticed, or are too afraid to touch. Yet - and this is a big 'yet' - the percentage of Malayalam films with female protagonists is abysmally small. The number of female directors is even smaller. In fact, the empathy pervading the best of Malayalam cinema tends to overshadow the sad reality that the worst of Malayalam cinema lionises masculinist toxicity as unabashedly as commercial cinema of all Indian languages.
Film industries tend to be microcosms of the societies from which they emerge. The Malayalam film industry, thus, reflects the state in which it is based: Kerala, respected for decades for its consistently high literacy rate, progressive government-run social welfare programmes, laudable sex ratio, and other impressive statistics matching the most developed countries in the world, yet also a deeply patriarchal state.
In this land of contradictions, the pushback against patriarchy is as strong as patriarchy itself. Most significantly, the one-of-its-kind
Women in Cinema Collective
has been campaigning for equality in the Malayalam industry since 2017, while women of India's remaining film industries have largely been bullied into silence after the MeToo wave of 2018. The skewed gender ratio in Kerala's filmmaking business has slightly improved too, with the likes of Sophia Paul, Sandra Thomas, Rima Kallingal, writer-director Anjali Menon, and a handful of others emerging as producers in the past decade or so.
The past five years have also witnessed a steady stream of noteworthy new female directors. They include Ratheena PT, who helmed the excellent Puzhu starring Mammootty and Parvathy Thiruvothu; Indhu VS, who made the poetic 19(1)(a) with Nithya Menen and Vijay Sethupathi; and Kunjila Mascillamani, whose Asanghadithar was the standout short in the anthology Freedom Fight, in addition to Indu Lakshmi and Sivaranjani.
Malayalam cinema is still a long way from a day when women routinely headline Empuraan-sized extravaganzas. But it's clear that change, even if minimal, is afoot in God's Own Country.