There have been many films about the journey of a film director and his effort in making a film. Some of the memorable ones that I’ve seen are Paresh Mokashi’s Marathi film, Harishchandra chi factory (2009) based on Dadasaheb Phalke’s incredible journey in making India’s first film, Raja Harishchandra (1913), Srijit Mukherjee’s Padatik (2024) on Mrinal Sen’s filmmaking struggles, the late Anik Dutta’s black and white film, Aparajito (2022) on Satyajit Ray’s undefeatable effort in making the iconic, Pather Panchali.

From Hollywood, I remember watching Ed Wood (1994) a biographical comedy about the B grade films Tim Burton was making with his lover and Steven Spielberg’s Fabelmans (2022) that chronicles his own journey of filmmaking wrapped in a narrative about his childhood and family struggles.

Then there is Zoya Akhtar’s production of Reema Katgi’s film, the Superboys of Malegaon (2024), about the parallel film industry that the characters of the film run in Malegaon and there was Raj and DK’s delectable Telugu film Cinema Bandhi (2021), about how an auto rickshaw driver discovers a camera lying in his auto and becomes a film maker.

There was also Zoya Akhtar’s brilliant Luck by chance and the terrific Netflix show Aryan Khan’s The Bads of Bollywood about the industry from an actor’s point of view.

Most of these remarkable films won awards, but none of them worked at the box office.

Last month, the Malayalam film Mollywood Times about a director wanting to make a horror film released. The film with the tagline, ‘a hate letter to cinema’, grossed over ₹18 crore at the box office in under two weeks, four times its return on investment.

In many ways, the film highlights the difference between how a film on the same subject made in Malayalam differs from others. Mollywood Times doesn’t focus on any aspect of film production; instead, it focuses on the writer’s struggle to hold onto the story, the stealing of intellectual property, the usurping of opportunities, the backstabbing, and the rampant manipulation to get ahead that’s prevalent in the industry.

There are more layers of a satisfactory drama for an audience than actual filmmaking struggles, which the audience may not connect with.

At a time when the world is obsessed with Malayalam films, SR Praveen, the film critic of The Hindu, has penned a timely book, Ticket to Kerala, that chronicles in detail, how Malayalam cinema got here, providing a history and context to the filmmaking styles and grammar.

Using extensive examples of various films released over the years, Praveen highlights all aspects of the evolution of cinema in Keralam using a wide sweeping lens. From its origins with a semi-porn film, Kinnara Thumpikal, that spawned an industry around it to new blockbusters like Lokah, he explains how the storytelling evolved, how the political landscape influenced the kind of stories, the rise of the new age Malayalam actors and the role of streaming post the pandemic in taking Malayalam to markets beyond Keralam.

Non formulaic cinema

Praveen concludes that Malayalam films have no formula. The high quality of writing has spurred a new wave of bold cinematic experiments. In fact, Malayalam cinema has exploited every subject with brilliant screenplay writing and technical excellence.

He illustrates with examples how even films with very thin storylines, like Traffic by Rajesh Pillai, which was a drama about the transportation of a live beating heart between two cities, are doing well at the box office.

The book is peppered with interviews. In one of them, Rajiv Ravi, the former cinematographer of Anurag Kashyap, explains how the ‘actuality trip’ in FTII where students were taken to outdoor trips to understand light, sound and environments, helped him work on building his scenes in his films.

Pandemic cinema

It may have been the only industry that made so many films on the pandemic and used inventiveness to stay productive during the pandemic. Amongst the first streaming only films audiences saw was C U soon, an experimental thriller shot completely indoors, using only mobile, laptops and CCTVs screens about a woman caught in a trafficking racket and clutching at straws to escape her plight.

With many police procedurals, taut thrillers, smart ghost and fantasy stories, the kind of box office collections Malayalam cinema is seeing is quite unprecedented. From the 1930s when barely a film was produced every year to over 200 films being released in 2023, the industry has come a long way.

In the chapter on the making of the superhero movies Minal Murali and Lokah, he details how village settings and very local problems for the protagonists separate the Malayalam films from Hollywood superhero films.

Director Priyadarshan had first made a virtue of silliness in the very serious Malayalam cinema with some rib-tickling comedies and then adapted them into highly popular Hindi films like Hera Pheri, Hungama, Bhool Bhullaiya, Garam Masala and others.

Two halves

The book is split in two halves, with the first half being a summary of the films of the last few years that have grown through appreciation nationally and the second half reads like a Wikipedia entry on the entire history of Malayalam cinema from the 1930s to date.

The book skips the history of actress Shakeela and the porn industry she helped build. It has extensive commentary on the Me-Too movement and names all the people involved in it. He also details the Hema Committee recommendations for POSH in film production.

Praveen credits the Film society movement which Adoor Gopalakrishnan launched many years before he even made his first film, Swayamwaram, for having introduced world cinema to people of Keralam and planted in them the seeds of film appreciation.

Perhaps the one issue with the book is that while it is flush with excessive details of films and people, it doesn’t make an attempt to explain the socio-political and cultural issues of the times that led cinema to evolve the way it did.

On an end note, have you observed how Malayalam films often begin their credits with the words ‘Thank God’, even before the production house or actors are credited? This is how this bunch of crazy filmmakers who even after tasting great success, remind themselves to stay humble and publicly express gratitude for the successful release of a film.

Grab a Ticket to Kerala and enjoy the ride.

Click here to check it out!

The reviewer is the founder & CEO of 91 Film Studios that produces regional language feature films

Published on July 5, 2026