Filmmakers like Lijo Jose Pellissery took this to a surreal level. In Jallikattu (2019), a film about a buffalo that escapes slaughter, the entire narrative becomes a descent into primal chaos, but it is anchored by the most specific of Kerala rituals: the bull taming sport, the butcher shops, the Orthodox Christian funeral rites, and the tribal hunting techniques. In Ee.Ma.Yau. (2018), the entire plot is driven by the culture of death in the Latin Catholic community of coastal Kerala—the arrangements for a grand funeral, the politics of the coffin, the competition over the size of the cross. These films argue that the soul of the story lies not in the plot, but in the anthropological accuracy of the ritual.

For decades, Malayalam cinema was accused of presenting a 'casteless' Kerala, a progressive utopia. The reality, as recent cinema has shown, is starkly different. The culture of caste, though often invisible to the upper-caste eye, is the hidden wound of the state. A new wave of filmmakers, including those from the marginalized Dalit community, has begun to shatter this myth.