Mathu Vadalara

Ritesh Rana's 2019 Telugu film is about what happens to a young man working as a delivery driver. While Babu is thinking of quitting because his wages are not enough, a friend gives him an idea: to report some of the packages as lost on the road. The first parcel he takes contains something unexpected and things spiral fast. The film joins a crime plot to comedy and keeps interrupting the story with flashbacks, deliberately scrambling the order of events for the viewer. The humour comes from the characters' incompetence and the violence is shown in a comic register. It was made cheaply and belongs to the period when independent productions were drawing attention in Telugu cinema. Who it's for: viewers who like black comedy and Telugu independent film. Who it's not for: anyone expecting a story told straight; the film complicates its structure on purpose.