Malayalam with English subtitles

Rating: PG

K.M. Madhusudhanan’s beautiful debut, set in pre-independence India, depicts the powerful and mesmerizing effect that cinema can have over people. Diwakaran’s life is transformed after his first experience with a bioscope show (an early type of film projector) conducted by a traveling Frenchman, DuPont.

Inspired by the projector’s potential, Diwakaran buys the bioscope from DuPont and travels with it through the Southern Indian landscape showcasing films. As Diwakaran’s journey expands his universe, his wife Nalini’s health worsens due to the haunting images in her dreams. Soon it is clear that Diwakaran has to make a choice between embracing cinema or giving up the bioscope in order to save his wife.

Packed with images that linger long in the memory, Madhusudhanan’s film sheds a light on the days when cinema started to take its first steps towards assimilation into an Indian society that was enchanted by the new images, but also fearful of what the technology truly represented.

SG