NO SWEEPING UNDER THE MAT

Fresh off its 2025 Kerala State Award win, the Malayalam film Feminichi Fathima had a screening in Delhi ahead of its OTT release today. In a conversation with director Fasil Muhammed, TMS explores the film's world - a family taking a homemaker for granted and she realising what she needs to do to assert herself.

- ADITHI REENA AJITH

SET in the coastal town of Ponnani in Kerala's Malappuram district, Fasil Muhammed's Feminichi Fathima is a subtle, satirical mirror to everything that goes unsaid inside a home.

First screened in 2024, the film found early acclaim at the International Film Festival of Kerala winning the FIPRESCI Award for Best Film in the International Competition, the NETPAC Award for Best Malayalam Film, and The Jury Award, and later travelled through festivals before its theatrical release in October.

This week, Feminichi Fathima came to Delhi's Alliance Francaise for a screening ahead of its OTT release on Manorama Max today, fresh off actor Shamla Hamza’s Kerala State Award win for Best Actress in 2025 for her performance as Fathima.

Fathima (Shamla Hamza) is a homemaker who lives with her husband Ashraf (Kumar Sunil), a teacher in a madrasa, their three children, and her mother-in-law. Her day begins before everyone else’s does and ends long after everyone else’s with cooking, feeding, bathing the children, dropping the youngest at preschool, tending to her husband and inlaw, and other jobs in between, with a sense of duty so ingrained that she barely pauses to think about it. Everything shifts when her eldest son wets the bed one night.