Malayalam cinema began in the 1920s, with the first film, "Bali," being released in 1926. However, it wasn't until the 1950s and 1960s that Malayalam cinema started gaining popularity, with films like "Nokketha Doorathu Kannum Nattu" (1957) and "Chemmeen" (1965). The latter, directed by Ramu Kariat, was the first Malayalam film to win a national award.

Kerala is a mosaic of Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam, and each faith tradition has been scrutinized. Christian guilt and priestly hypocrisy were explored in Chidambaram (1985) and the more recent Ee.Ma.Yau (2018), which turned a funeral into a black comedy about religious pomp. Muslim identity, often caricatured in Bollywood, is handled with nuance in films like Sudani from Nigeria (2018), which showcases the secular, football-loving culture of Malabar. The industry refuses to make propaganda; it makes inquiries.

Some notable Malayalam filmmakers include:

: Contemporary narratives are increasingly deconstructing "hegemonic masculinity" and portraying it as toxic, while questioning the traditional middle-class family structure as an ideal space of domestic contentment.

Malayalam cinema, often called , is widely celebrated as India’s most grounded and artistically rigorous film industry. Unlike the high-spectacle nature of Bollywood, Malayalam films are deeply rooted in the socio-political fabric of Kerala, prioritizing narrative depth over star-driven "masala" tropes. A Foundation of Literature and Realism

Screenwriters have elevated the slang of specific regions—the coarse Thiruvananthapuram dialect, the sharp Thrissur accent, or the Arabic-tinged Malabari tongue—into art. A character’s region, class, and religion are revealed within seconds by their choice of pronoun or verb conjugation. In Kumbalangi , the way the brothers speak to each other (using the disrespectful "ninakku" instead of the polite "ningalkku" ) establishes the domestic hierarchy without exposition. Cinema preserves and propagates these linguistic nuances that are fading in urban, anglicized Kerala.