Helen

Mathukutty Xavier's 2019 Malayalam film shows how small an incident has to be before it turns into a nightmare. Helen is an ordinary suburban young woman; one evening she disappears, and a long search begins for her father and the people close to her. The film's strength is holding two lines at once: the physical struggle where Helen actually is, and outside it, a police investigation proceeding on the wrong assumptions. Where institutions look first when a young woman goes missing is the film's quiet criticism. Anna Ben carries the lead in her first film, and her character is never reduced to a victim. The tension rests on time passing and options running out rather than on cheap tricks. Who it's for: viewers who like small-scale survival thrillers built around a single situation. Who it's not for: anyone who would find confinement and cold-set sequences distressing.