Thittam Irandu

Athira, a police officer newly posted to Chennai, begins to look into the disappearance of a childhood friend. When she suspects that what looked like an accident may have been staged, the case turns somewhere else entirely and she comes up against things she did not know about her friend’s life. The story holds its central piece of information back to the end in order to keep the tension going, and the argument around the film comes out of exactly that. It was noted for putting the visibility of trans men into conversation in Indian cinema; against that, it was heavily criticised for the demeaning terms it uses for trans people, for giving the part to an actor who is not trans, and for placing a trans character at the centre of a crime plot. Aishwarya Rajesh appears in Vignesh Karthick’s hundred and twenty two minute Tamil film, completed in 2021.