Gaganachari

Arun Chandu's 2024 Malayalam film is set in the 2040s. The world is under control after a collapse; an alien fugitive takes refuge in a flat shared by three difficult bachelors and the four are forced to live together. The film tells its science fiction in mockumentary form. The characters speak to camera, archive footage is fabricated and news broadcasts are imitated; the constraint of a limited budget is turned into an advantage by that form. Most of the humour comes from domestic friction. The dystopia is not taken seriously and the political references are direct; a genre experiment on this scale is uncommon in Malayalam cinema. Who it's for: those who like low-budget science fiction and the mockumentary form. Who it's not for: viewers expecting visually ambitious science fiction; the film works with ideas rather than effects.