: Films often reference literature, poetry, and philosophy, mirroring Kerala’s high literacy rate.
However, mainstream cinema has often sanitized caste oppression. For decades, savarna (upper-caste) perspectives dominated. The turning point came with Perariyathavar (2018, A Respectable Woman ), which unflinchingly depicted the lived reality of a Pulayar woman. Nayattu (2021) exposed how caste and political power intersect within the state’s police machinery—a stark counter-narrative to Kerala’s progressive image. Christian and Muslim communities, integral to Kerala’s religious diversity, are portrayed with nuance in films like Palunku (2006) on Syrian Christian materialism and Sudani from Nigeria (2018) on Malabar Muslim kinship and football culture.