Purusha Pretham

Krishand's 2023 Malayalam film follows Inspector Sebastian, obliged to deal with an unidentified male body. The procedure is complicated, the records incomplete, and while wrestling with his own troubles Sebastian loses the corpse. The film makes bureaucracy the source of its comedy. The signatures, forms and correspondence between institutions required to register a dead person are shown one by one; the humour comes not from exaggeration but from how things actually work. The tone sits between black comedy and social criticism. How unidentified dead disappear inside the system stays beneath the narrative throughout. Prasanth Alexander leads, and the telling is partly in mockumentary form. Who it's for: those who like Malayalam black comedy and procedural narratives. Who it's not for: viewers uncomfortable with corpses and autopsy footage; the film uses them inside its comedy.