Stephen Frears to adapt William Dalrymple's The Anarchy

While Malayalam cinema has certainly produced its fair share of compelling stories in recent years, it is also no stranger to mediocrity.

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Padakuthira, directed by debutant Dr. Salon Symon, lands firmly in the latter category. A confused film that never decides what it wants to be, it tries dabbling in satire, spoof, and eventually a heavy-duty drama—without succeeding in any of them. It follows Nandakumar (Aju Varghese), a sensationalist journalist running the once-respected magazine Padakuthira, now mired in yellow journalism. Alongside his team, Nandakumar spins fabricated stories for clicks and attention, leading to a series of absurd consequences. When they cross paths with Ravishankar (Renji Panicker), a mentally unstable person, they take his outlandish speculations as gospel, resulting in increasingly ridiculous events that threaten to expose the magazine for what it truly is.