Pains and gains: The year in south Indian cinema

Big-budget films from the south often disappointed in 2024. But there was progress on other fronts, with filmmakers looking for new settings and embracing mid-budget titles

- Aditya Shrikrishna

The films of south India are now on a pedestal. Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and to a lesser extent Kannada cinema have usurped the homogeneity of Hindi cinema in popular culture. There is a crisis of confidence—not stories or storytellers—in Hindi cinema, but it is dictated by box-office numbers and the industry's set ways.

That crisis exists in Tamil too. It is only Telugu that possesses some secret sauce for pan-Indianness, a concoction so repetitive it stands at the doorstep of saturation (Pushpa 2: The Rule is its latest dilution).

Yet, the south is routinely producing films the larger public yearns for. It is a mistake to put all of south Indian cinema in one box. The four industries have different financial structures, and the calibre of writers, directors, actors and stars wildly differ. 2024 was a strange year for many reasons in the south—characters crossed borders, an industry learned a lesson, and arthouse mingled with the mainstream.

THE TRAVELLING MALAYALAM CINEMA

Malayalam cinema has legs. In 2024, the cinema went beyond Kerala's borders. It began with the greatest swing of them all. Lijo Jose Pellissery's Malaikottai Vaaliban drops us into the middle of a desert with vivid colours and prizefights. An unnamed universe where Vaaliban's (Mohanlal) Malayalam blends with Rangapattinam Rangarani's (Sonalee Kulkarni) Tamil, a harmony as fluid and precise as the swordfights with a Portuguese army.