You know Hindi films. Meet Malayalam cinema.
Ten films for the Hindi-film viewer crossing into Malayalam cinema, in the order to watch them.
You have already seen Malayalam films. You saw them as Hindi remakes. Hera Pheri is Ramji Rao Speaking (1989). Bhool Bhulaiyaa is Manichitrathazhu (1993). Drishyam is Drishyam. Bodyguard is Bodyguard. For thirty years Bombay has been buying its best ideas from a small industry in Kerala that makes films on a fraction of the budget, and this pack takes you to the originals. If you have never watched an Indian film at all, start with the Hindi pack and come back here second.
What is different: almost everything you think of as Indian-film grammar is turned down. The hero does not get an entrance song. The heroine looks like someone you went to school with. Films are shot where they are set, in real houses with real rain on the roof, and the plot turns on family, money and pride rather than on a villain. Kerala has the highest literacy in India and its audience behaves like a reading audience: writing is the star, which is why the best directors here are writers first, and why the same twenty faces can carry two hundred films without anyone getting bored. Where Tamil cinema is loud and political and Telugu cinema is spectacle, Malayalam is the industry that trusts a quiet scene. It also wins: four of India’s official Oscar entries in the last three decades were Malayalam, and in 2024 the industry had the best year at the box office in its history.
These ten are in order. We start with the films you already half-know from their remakes, then the new-wave warmth that made Malayalam cinema famous, then its dry, dark register, and then we walk back into the eighties and further, to the film the whole industry stands on. By number five you will stop reading subtitles as work. By number ten you will be watching a 1965 film about fishermen and feeling it.
The one you know. A cable-TV man protects his family after a crime, and the original is leaner and colder than the Ajay Devgn version, with an ending that lands harder because nobody is there to soften it. Remade in six languages including Chinese, which tells you the script is the star.
Kids: fine, 12+.
Not streaming in US yet. We check every Friday.
02Bangalore Days (2014)
Three cousins chase their lives to the big city and find each other again. The warmest ensemble film of its decade, most people’s first Malayalam film for a reason, and the closest this industry gets to a Karan Johar picture, except everyone in it looks like a person.
Kids: fine.
Not streaming in US yet. We check every Friday.
03Kumbalangi Nights (2019)
Four brothers in a broken house on the backwaters, and a “complete man” across the water who turns out to be the villain. The film people mean when they say Malayalam cinema is in a golden age: no plot to speak of, and you will not look away. Third because now you are ready for a film that is all texture.
Kids: 12+.
Rent on Amazon Video, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, YouTube
04Manjummel Boys (2024)
A trip goes wrong; one friend is at the bottom of a cave the police have written off. A survival thriller from a true story, the first Malayalam film past 200 crore, and proof that the industry can do scale without losing its manners. Fourth because it is the best argument that small and big are not opposites here.
Kids: 12+, claustrophobic.
On Hulu
A small-town photographer swears off his sandals until an insult is avenged. A revenge comedy at walking pace, pure Kerala, and the halfway point on purpose: if this makes you laugh, the subtitles have stopped being work.
Kids: fine.
Not streaming in US yet. We check every Friday.
06The Great Indian Kitchen (2021)
A new bride, an old house, and meals that never stop needing to be made. Almost no dialogue, no villain, and it started a thousand arguments about marriage across India. Sixth because now you can watch a film that is all repetition and understand that the repetition is the point.
Kids: fine, but it is for the adults.
Rent on Amazon Video
07Premam (2015)
One man, three loves, fifteen years. The campus romance an entire generation has memorised, the film that made Nivin Pauly a star and Malayalam the language of the college canteen across the South. It is here, late, because it is the industry’s own Dil Chahta Hai and you should meet it once you know the accent.
Kids: 12+.
Not streaming in US yet. We check every Friday.
The original Bhool Bhulaiyaa: an old house, a locked room, a woman who is not herself. A psychological thriller dressed as a ghost story, with Mohanlal as the psychiatrist and a performance from Shobana that won the National Award. Eighth because this is where you go backwards, and the door in is a film you already know the ending of.
Kids: fine from about 10, it is a ghost story.
On Eros Now · Rent on Amazon Video
Two unemployed men set out for the Gulf and end up in Madras by mistake. The eighties comedy the whole state can quote, Mohanlal and Sreenivasan at their loosest, and the source of the Malayalam habit of putting jokes in the mouths of losers. Ninth because the eighties were the golden decade and this is its funniest door.
Kids: fine.
Not streaming in US yet. We check every Friday.
10Chemmeen (1965)
A fisherman’s daughter, a Muslim trader, and a sea that keeps its own accounts. Melodrama at full tilt, the first film from the South to win the national award for best feature, and the songs your grandparents can sing. Watch it last, because by now you can feel a 1965 film the way it was meant to be felt.
Kids: fine, heavy.
On Eros Now
Done with these? Top Rated, Malayalam ranks everything we have scored: Kishkindha Kaandam (87), Unda (85) and Ee.Ma.Yau. (85) are the next three doors, and Elippathayam (1982) is where the art cinema starts.
Malayalam’s strong suit is the thriller: the ranked list →