Churuli

Two police officers go into a settlement deep in the forest, tracking a fugitive. The villagers appear to answer their questions, and every answer sends them somewhere else. Roads repeat, the same bridge is crossed again and again, the same faces come back with different names. At some point the question stops being who they are looking for and becomes whether they can get out. Lijo Jose Pellissery deliberately declines to resolve his narrative. The structure is a labyrinth, and the film keeps the viewer at exactly the officers' level of information. The forest itself functions as a place that sets rules, and reality starts to slide. The film went up on SonyLIV on 19 November 2021 and set off an argument in Kerala over its language. The version prepared for cinemas had the profanity toned down; the streaming version did not. A lawyer's petition to have it removed from the platform was dismissed by the Kerala High Court, which held that a filmmaker has the discretion to choose the language his characters use. Who it's for: Viewers who like experimental narrative, films where folk horror meets science fiction, and Pellissery's cinema. Who it's not for: The density of profanity is very high and the film answers no questions. Maddening if you want conventional narrative.