Kammatti Paadam

Krishnan has lived in Mumbai for years, away from his family and friends. One day his childhood friend Ganga calls and hangs up without speaking. Sensing danger, Krishnan returns to Kammattipadam in Kochi, where they both grew up. From there the film works backwards: childhood, adolescence, their twenties, and the fact that they are now in their forties. Rajeev Ravi's film starts as a story of friendship and turns into one of dispossession. The Dalit community living in Kammattipadam lost their land to property companies, and Kochi's growth into a metro city was built on exactly that loss. Every break in Krishnan and Ganga's lives corresponds to a step in that process. Dulquer Salmaan plays Krishnan and Vinayakan plays Ganga. Vinayakan's performance became the most discussed thing in the film, with Manikandan Achari also in the cast. The screenplay is by P. Balachandran. Who it's for: Viewers who like films that take urbanisation and caste together, realist Malayalam cinema, and narratives spread across long stretches of time. Who it's not for: The violence is dense and the time jumps can make it hard to follow. The room given to the female characters is also limited.