This Kerala village film fest serves food to make women leave kitchen and enjoy classics

Kochi: Sophy George was all happy as she was leaving the Government Vocational Higher Secondary School, Kadamakudy, on Saturday evening. “I liked the film. I really liked it; that’s why I stayed back. Otherwise, I would have left early, we have our grandchildren at home,” she said, with her husband George beside her. The film she referred to was 'Koormavatara', the 2011 film directed by Kannada master Girish Kasaravalli. It was screened inside the makeshift cinema hall on the school compound on the second day of the second edition of the Kadamakudy International Film Festival (KaIFF), a one-of-its-kind rural celebration of global cinema, at the scenic village surrounded by backwaters.

Sophy is among the many ordinary women of Kadamakudy, mostly homemakers and labourers in the fisheries sector, who have all of a sudden found themselves exposed to world cinema. The village film fest, despite all of its pardonable amateurism, has made it a point to ensure maximum female participation at the event. The organisers of the event have taken what could be the most practical step to make it possible – free the women from the kitchen. On all three days of the event, lunch and dinner are served at the venue for all attendees. 

“Once we worked out a plan to organise the film fest, we thought of how to make it possible for the common women in the village to watch the films. That’s how the idea of serving food struck us. Still, in our country, it is often taken for granted that the responsibility to cook food for the entire family lies only on women. We knew that it was not enough just to tell the women to come and attend the film fest. We knew they would ask us who would cook food then. But then we had the answer ready, and our experiment proved to be successful at the maiden edition,” Fr Augustine Vattoli, the parish priest in the locality and the joint convenor of KaIFF, told Onmanorama. 

“Fr Vattoli actually suggested that we would serve the villagers with food and food for thought,” Joshy Joseph, the artistic director of KaIFF, said. “We have actually demolished the elite wall of film festivals by making a bridge between the classic cinema and the local people,” the national award-winning filmmaker from Kadamakudy said. 

“We have actually shut our kitchens for three days because food is prepared and served here so that a family can come and enjoy the films together,” M. T. Kochurani, a homemaker donning the role of the festival convenor, said.

Legendary filmmaker Kasaravalli, who inaugurated the festival, was highly impressed with its local participation. “This is an event where you can feel that it has come from the people of a village. The sophisticated elite look of other film festivals is not here. It’s down to earth, and people really participate in it. That kind of relation between cinema and society one can see here — the impact of cinema on society,” he told Onmanorama. The Ghatashraddha director compared the Kadamakudy festival with Kannada literature great K. V. Subbanna’s famous initiative of making the villagers of Heggodu in Karnataka well-versed in world cinema with frequent screenings and discussions.

Girish’s daughter and filmmaker Ananya Kasaravalli added: “I’m amazed to see the women’s participation at the film fest. Also, interestingly, many of the films selected for screening are women-oriented or made by female filmmakers.”

The 2025 edition of KaIFF is themed Missing Voices. The films scheduled for screening include Nirmalyam (Malayalam), Alice in the Cities (German), Kuzhankal (Tamil), Harikatha Prasanga (Kannada), and Capernaum (Lebanese). 

The event is organised in association with Kadamakudy Film Society, Kerala State Chalachitra Academy, GVHSS Film Club, Kadamakudy, Kadamakudy Grama Panchayat, and Cochin Shipyard Ltd. Manipur MP and filmmaker Angomcha Bimol Akoijam was the chief guest of the maiden edition held last year. Journalist Anand Haridas is the festival director.