Stories That Endured, Defining Malayalam Cinema In 2025
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From intimate family dramas and reimagined folklore to sports films that rejected macho triumphalism, the year’s finest works chose emotional truth over noise and complexity over easy catharsis, Neelima Menon writes.
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MALAYALAM cinema’s best work in 2025 came from films willing to slow down, look inward, and resist easy answers. Across genres, filmmakers seemed less interested in spectacle than in emotional consequence, less drawn to easy catharsis than to moral and psychological complexity. This selection reflects a cinema increasingly willing to sit with discomfort, ask harder questions, and resist neat resolutions. * LOKAH: CHAPTER 1 - CHANDRA | Director Dominic Arun a nd writer Santhy Balachandran craft a female superhero by reworking a popular Kerala folklore and placing her in a bustling city, where she is sent on a mission to wipe out wrongdoers. Within Chandra (Kalyani Priyadarshan) resides a being caught in the memory of her deceased lover, yet resolute in carrying out her purpose. Add to this a gallery of quirky characters and a boy-next-door who falls for Chandra at first sight, and the film becomes a riveting theatrical experience. Designed as a prequel to a larger fantastical universe, the narrative also offers glimpses of two key characters, ensuring that the intrigue lingers well beyond the final frame. Fav scene: The Chandra reveal glides effortlessly from folklore into flesh, collapsing myth and modernity into a single, arresting image. |
Quirks, Misfires & Creative Crimes: Malayalam Cinema In 2025
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From the most pointless plot twists to spectacular miscasting, 2025 delivered its fair share of films that tried too hard, said too little, and occasionally owed the audience an apology.
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IF THE YEAR 2025 revealed anything, it was a growing confusion between ambition and excess. These films weren’t short on ideas, budgets, or intent, but too often mistook noise for nuance and provocation for purpose. This list maps the moments where Malayalam cinema overreached, misjudged itself, or briefly forgot who it was speaking to. * 1) The most pointless plot twists of the year | MIRAGE: A young woman’s search for her missing fiancé opens a Pandora’s box of dark alleys and buried secrets. But Jeethu Joseph’s mystery thriller overplays its hand, piling twist upon twist until intrigue gives way to fatigue, and you find yourself simply waiting for it to end. — N.M. |
Beyond The Alpha: How Malayalam Cinema Reimagined Masculinity In 2025
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This year, masculinity is being reshaped not through triumph but through restraint, caregiving, and survival. Be it a broker, a cop, or a boy-next-door, they carry softness into hostile systems.
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ONE OF THE MOST STRIKING subversions in Lokah: Chapter 1 – Chandra lies in the dynamic between Chandra (Kalyani Priyadarshan) and Sunny (Naslen Gafoor). Very early in the film, we are introduced to Sunny, the quintessential boy-next-door, who finds himself quietly smitten by his newly moved-in neighbour. What’s notable is how deliberately the film avoids the usual beats of cinematic wooing. Sunny is soft, hesitant, and acutely conscious of Chandra’s boundaries. Take the moment inside the auto, where he casually, almost awkwardly, extends a party invitation, fully prepared for her to say no. Or the sequence at the house party, where even when Chandra arrives in all her splendour, he never oversteps or attempts to claim space he hasn’t been offered. His restraint is not performative but rather feels instinctive. — N.M. |
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