Aditya Shrikrishna

ARAVIND SIVA’s Tamil film The Tablet begins innocently. Prabhu (Hemanathan), ten years old, is getting ready for school, and our point of view is his goody boy face as he shuffles through things in his modest home. He finds what he’s looking for and is eager to get out when his mother insists on combing his hair. He goes to school and calls his friend Ramesh outside. In the few seconds it takes for the friend to answer his call, two smug-looking boys playfully tease him before Ramesh joins, and they run away from the densely concentrated areas of the school. Prabhu gives Ramesh the tablet he’s stolen from home and says it is for immunity and strength, and both can put on some weight and become strong. Ramesh takes it promptly, and during the morning assembly, he faints.

If you possess above average knowledge of contemporary Tamil cinema, Semmalar Annam might be familiar. Maybe you cannot place the name, but you will recall the face, a face unfortunately stereotyped by Tamil filmmakers. She is an actor with such ferocious presence that if you give her half a decent role, she will single-handedly lift a film. Films like Leena Manimekalai’s Maadathy and Jaikumar Sedhuraman’s Sennai are a testament to this talent, but my favourite Semmalar performance came in a short film, Arikarasudhan’s Ullangai Nellikkani, an adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s The Woman Who Came at Six o’clock. She has also directed short films, and now her debut directorial feature, Mayilaa, premieres at the International Film Festival Rotterdam this week in the Bright Future section. The 97-minute feature, produced by Newton Cinema and presented by Pa. Ranjith, is quite indicative of the promises in this section full of debutantes.

Nalan Kumaraswamy has been around Tamil cinema forever now. Yet the first winner of Naalaya Iyakkunar, the programme that gave us a handful of new-age filmmakers still working today, has only made three films. It’s surprising, considering the prolific output of his contemporaries and the value of the singular voice he brings to cinema. Thirteen years after his debut, his third film, Vaa Vaathiyaar, finally made it to theatres this week. The one quality that stands out in Nalan’s work is the postmodernism that permeates his characters and extends beyond mere window dressing in his frames. It is present in entirety of Soodhu Kavvum (2013) and very much central to his script contributions in Thiagarajan Kumararaja’s Super Deluxe (2019). Funnily enough, his sophomore film Kadhalum Kadanthu Pogum (2016) is far from cynical and serves as one of the best romantic films from Tamil in the past two decades. Vaa Vaathiyaar is marketed as a masala or commercial fare from Nalan, and it is easy to see why.

In Parasakthi — the 2026 version, not the seminal 1952 Krishnan-Panju film written by M Karunanidhi — Sudha Kongara often films Sivakarthikeyan in silhouettes. We meet Chezhiyan (helpfully working as a Tamizh name as well as a call to a revolutionary like Che) in 1959, and what we first see is his outline amidst darkness as he holds an effigy (the language of Hindi anthropomorphised) and threatens to stop a train. It is an immersive entry for a hero in a film based on the anti-Hindi agitations of 1965 in the Madras state. We see him as a student leader, an activist and a revolutionary. And the silhouette gives him shape and form, but not characteristics. It centres the movement and students as its ultimate progenitors.

In Vipin Radhakrishnan’s Angammal, Geetha Kailasam anchors the tension between the old and the new. Based on Perumal Murugan’s short story Kodithuni, the Tamil film is due for theatrical release this week after premiering at prestigious film festivals last year. It is the beginning of the 1990s, and this very intriguing period is bookmarked by Singaravelan, Roja, Sami Potta Mudichu and more. Pavalam (Saran Sakthi) aka Pavala Muthu and Jasmine (Mullaiyarasi) have their dates in the movie theatre amidst modest snacks and seats as they watch the film less and indulge more either in each other (a bout of make out set to Tamizha Tamizha chorus is hilarious) or in familial matters like the impending visit of Jasmine’s parents to Pavalam’s house to discuss their marriage. Pavalam is the rare and, probably, first graduate from his village — and a doctor at that — and his experiences of the outside world cloud his foundation as he comes to see his mother’s style as an embarrassment.

Vikarnan Ashok’s Mask begins in chaos. Not of the good cinematic kind. It’s not a film with a handful of characters overwhelmed by their own endgames. It’s not the cinema where chaos is orchestrated to give the audience a high, one where so many things happen so fast that we hold our breath in unison, only for that single moment to strike when we let loose. Mask inadvertently orchestrates chaos. It has a narration voiced by director Nelson Dilipkumar. It has overlapping dialogues, layer over layer, along with this narration. It also has GV Prakash’s incongruent score. We witness a loot, Money Heist style but with MR Radha masks and then Nelson introduces us to a host of characters, chiefly Velu (Kavin), who has caused two deaths thanks to his paramour Rathi (Ruhani Sharma), and Bhoomi (Andrea Jermiah), a philanthropist who saves children from human trafficking but she might also be into the flesh trade and probably moonlights as a power broker. Confused much? Mask is one such hurriedly put-together meal of different cuisines with no flavour profile.

Cinematographer-turned-director Sraiyanti’s Auto Queens begins with a bird’s-eye view of Chennai and comes to rest at a safe distance above the bustling city’s coast when we hear two voices munching on fish and talking. “The worries of the world fade away at the beach,” one says. They are Mohana and Leela Rani, women auto drivers of Chennai who are here to buy a peaceful minute away from the roads of a rough city, one that is hostile and sceptical about carving public space for its women.

The opening credits of Selvamani Selvaraj’s Kaantha play over behind-the-scenes photographs of classic South Indian cinema from an era when films were mostly made in Madras and a handful of studios produced all movies. These were Modern Theatres (based in Salem), AVM, Gemini Studios, Vijaya Vauhini and Prasad, and the artists and producers tied to these studios made films across Tamil, Telugu and even Hindi. Kaantha creates the fictitious Modern Studios headed by a young second-generation producer, Martin Prabhakaran (Ravindra Vijay), and borrows the “Thiruchengodu” from the real-life Modern Theatres founder TR Sundaram and gives it to its protagonist TK Mahadevan, played by Dulquer Salmaan. We enter Kaantha in media res, the dramatic stakes already high at the epicentre of the conflict. Ayya (Samuthirakani), a modest filmmaker, is still waiting to make his shelved magnum opus ‘Shaantha’ — a horror film based on his mother — and the current sensation (and Ayya’s apprentice turned nemesis) TK Mahadevan’s willingness is all it takes to get it back on the floors. After a quick conversation in Martin’s office with Ayya, Kaantha starts off on day one of the shoot with Ayya and Mahadevan’s hostility fresh and glistening.