No article on Malayalam cinema and Kerala culture is honest without addressing the elephant in the room: .

Some notable Malayalam films and filmmakers include:

Films like Joji (an adaptation of Macbeth) took the concept of the joint family—a pillar of Kerala culture—and exposed its toxicity. We are seeing a shift from revering tradition to questioning it.

In Bollywood, the setting is often a character, but usually a romanticized one. In Malayalam cinema, geography is destiny.