Onam fills a house with colour. There are flowers at the doorstep, freshly-ironed clothes on the chair, and the aroma of umpteen dishes rising from the kitchen. Yet some of Onam’s warmest hours are spent in darkness, in a room full of strangers, waiting for a projector to switch on.
For a Malayali living away from Kerala, the theatre can offer a small sense of home. Once the lights go down and the film begins, we are presented with more colours, emotions, and feelings of familiarity. Chennai resident and artist Beena Unnikrishnan cannot remember a bad Onam film from her childhood. Not because the films were all good, but because it didn’t matter to her how the movies were compared to the experience of being together and watching them as a family. She shares, “During the holidays, all the cousins would gather at my grandmother’s house in Kollam. The theatres were four or five kilometres away — I wonder how we thought nothing of walking that distance! All the cousins, accompanied by some elders, would walk together to the theatre. Each day, one uncle or aunt, or sometimes my parents, would sponsor the movie. We watched almost every film that was released during Onam. Apart from the main three days of celebrations at home, these movie outings were perhaps one of the things we cousins looked forward to the most.”
The ‘Premam’ effect
The connection between Onam and cinema has always been there from the television era, when latest releases would stream on channels at a fixed time and everyone in the house had to wrap up the festivities to be in time to catch the movie. Surya Chidambaram, director of Kamala Cinemas, traces the shift in Chennai’s relationship with Malayalam film to a single year, 2015. “Premam was a gamechanger for Chennai’s audience. It ran for one year in Chennai. Until then, Malayalam movies were there, dubbed in Tamil. That’s why even now Nivin Pauly movies are doing well here.” He adds that there is now a market in the city for bigger stars too, Mammootty and Mohanlal among them, and for every kind of film in between. “Cinema is purely a religion in Chennai, in South India. As much as cricket is a national religion, here it is a unique one,” he says.
It is not only Malayalis filling those seats. Chennai’s regular Tamil-film audiences have begun crossing over. “They are okay with watching the movie in the same language, as there will anyway be subtitles. They appreciate the language,” he says. Commercial success, he notes, follows no fixed formula, arriving instead through word of mouth days after a release, or not at all. Streaming, in his view, has not dented the ritual so much.
The growing national appetite for Malayalam cinema has helped strengthen its audience outside Kerala, including in Tamil Nadu. The trend has coincided with a run of commercially successful Onam releases, from Oppam (2016) and Njandukalude Naattil Oridavela (2017) to Love Action Drama (2019), Thallumaala and Nna Thaan Case Kodu (2022), RDX (2023), Ajayante Randam Moshanam (2024) and Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra (2025).
Sneak-peek and smuggling
If the appetite for Malayalam cinema here has changed, so has the experience of feeding it. A few people can trace that change as precisely as Aalapana Kumar Tharamel, a designer who grew up in the city.
For her, movie-watching during Onam would begin the night before. “My dad would stay up till twelve at night for when the bookings would open. We used to get physical tickets, so he’d go to the theatre to book them immediately at midnight, because Wednesday was when they’d open the schedule for the coming week.”
Getting into the theatre was an operation. Getting snacks past the counter was another. Aalapana remembers her mother’s method for smuggling in a bottle of Sprite, rather than paying multiplex prices for it in a paper cup. “She’d remove the wrapper and make it look like one of those reused bottles, open it a little to let some fizz out, and carry it in as water,” she laughs. The theatre itself, in her memory, was Sathyam Cinemas before it was anything else. “It was always Sathyam for me. OG popcorn, OG everything. And then the multiplexes came in. I was there when Escape, Palazzo, and Phoenix (Luxe) came up. The theatres have changed a lot. It feels more elite in a way, at least places like Phoenix. Before it was just a movie and back home. Now it’s become more of a plan,” she says.
On screen, Onam for her belongs to one actor. “Onam is always Mohanlal for me,” she says, tracing it back to a childhood viewing of Innathe Chintha Vishayam (2008), one of the feel-good Sathyan Anthikad films that shaped what she still looks for in a festival release. Last year, she watched Odum Kuthira Chaadum Kuthira and Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra, and noticed something new in the seats around her. “There’re a lot more non-Malayalis watching Malayalam films now. I feel like I have an upper hand there, because I understand the references, the jokes better,” she quips. The wider audience makes her feel proud.
A chaotic nostalgia
Not everyone remembers Onam this gently. For Alen Moni Mathews, a journalist, growing up, Onam meant three big releases, and catching all three on day one. The single-screen theatres in his hometown were not on any booking app. “If a show was at 11 am, thousands would be standing outside Abhinaya Theatre in Changanacherry by 8 am, just staring at that huge black gate.” During those hours outside the gate, friends were made, absurd fan fights were picked up, and sometimes a few of them trauma-bonded over their favourite hero’s last box-office flop. By 10 am, police vans would arrive to manage the chaos. The old security guard would finally appear with a knowing smirk, unlock the chain, and trigger a wild, stampede-like rush toward the iron-grilled ticket counter. He says, “During one such Onam day rush, my friend Sayaf got pinned inside the cage-like space. I requested help from a police officer to control the crowd. He had been standing by the women’s line all morning — where only about 10 women were waiting quietly, while mayhem ensued outside. When I yelled out in frustration, he thrashed my leg with a lathi. A few minutes later, Sayaf squeezed out of the crowd, bruised, but holding eight tickets. We limped into the theater, forgetting the pain the second the screen lit up.”
Last year, he recalls someone shouting “Happy Onam” as the end credits for Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra rolled and the lights came up. Before the sound could fade, the entire theatre shouted it back. He says, “No matter where we are in the world, the moment the lights dim for an Onam release, the distance vanishes.”
Present-day spectacle
This year’s Onam ballot is crowded. Bethlehem Kudumba Unit and Khalifa are among the Malayalam releases jostling for the festive slot, with I’m Game arriving soon. Tamil cinema offers Vishwanath & Sons, with Hi not far behind. And for anyone who wants a sure thing, there is always Spider-Man: Brand New Day, swinging back into a theatre near you.
But an Onam release does not have to open with a bang to find its audience. Surya says a film can take a few days to gather momentum, and on festive days, the festival takes precedence. "A lot of people finish the festival first. They will have lunch, and then they’ll come watch a movie. That’s part of the day for them. I see a lot of them in Onam outfits," he says.
For Beena, the ritual didn’t end when she left Kerala. It simply changed shape and moved indoors. “I began watching the Onam special movies on television instead. A movie had a particular day and a particular time, and you had to wait for it. I remember making sure I didn’t miss those special telecasts.” She hasn’t spent Onam in Kerala in years, but a visit a week or ten days before is enough to catch the shape of it. “I have seen the rush in the streets, the excitement, the preparations, that unmistakable festive energy. And somewhere within all of that, cinema still seems to hold its place,” she concludes.