The most defining feature of Malayalam cinema, compared to its Indian counterparts, is its obsessive commitment to realism. You will rarely find a hero who can punch ten men into the stratosphere. Instead, you find protagonists who are teachers, fishermen, journalists, auto-rickshaw drivers, or washed-up journalists.
No discussion of Kerala culture is complete without the "Gulf Dream." Since the 1970s, the remittances from the Middle East have transformed Kerala. Malayalam cinema has chronicled this better than any economist. Pathemari (2015) follows a migrant worker through decades of loneliness in Dubai, returning home as a bag of bones. Maheshinte Prathikaaram (2016) opens with a wedding disrupted by a groom flying in from the Gulf, only to be abandoned at the altar. These films capture the specific melancholia of the Gulf returnee—a man who has money but no home, who has seen skyscrapers but still locks his doors with a wooden latch. mallu kambi kathakal bus yathra %5BEXCLUSIVE%5D