Set in the coastal town of Ponnani in Kerala’s Malappuram district, Fasil Muhammed's Feminichi Fathima is a subtle, satirical mirror to everything that goes unsaid inside a home. First screened in 2024, the film found early acclaim at the International Film Festival of Kerala winning the FIPRESCI Award for Best Film in the International Competition, the NETPAC Award for Best Malayalam Film, and The Jury Award, and later travelled through festivals before its theatrical release in October.
This week, it came to Delhi’s Alliance Francaise for a screening ahead of its OTT release on Manorama Max today, fresh off actor Shamla Hamza’s Kerala State Award win for Best Actress in 2025 for her performance as Fathima.
Fathima (Shamla Hamza) is a homemaker who lives with her husband Ashraf (Kumar Sunil), a teacher in a madrasa, their three children, and her mother-in-law. Her day begins before everyone else’s does and ends long after everyone else’s with cooking, feeding, bathing the children, dropping the youngest at preschool, tending to her husband and in-law, and other jobs in between, with a sense of duty so ingrained that she barely pauses to think about it. Everything shifts when her eldest son wets the bed one night.
What should be a minor mishap grows into an obsessive mission. Fathima spends days trying to clean, dry, scrub, sun, and restore the mattress — but each method fails. The film follows her through this frustrated, almost comical pursuit, as the mattress becomes symbolic of all her unending responsibilities. It’s only when exhaustion fuelled by her husband's irritation and disapproval of her methods finally stops her in her tracks that she confronts what she has ignored for years — her own absence from her own life.
A journey of autonomy
Interestingly, the film did not begin with this idea. Muhammed originally wanted to explore how women find independence through social media and mobile phones. But the story shifted when he heard his sister complaining about her own son wetting the bed. “When she was talking about the bed, I saw her struggle and emotions — that’s when I realised my film was missing something,” he says. The mattress became a symbol of Fathima’s realisation, an anchor for her shift in perspective and her slow journey towards autonomy.
The film’s commentary is subtly done. It comes through in small, sharp details: Ashraf calling out for her to switch on the fan, hand him his slippers, food, or fetch his shawl; the youngest child pestering her for the ten rupees she doesn’t have; the steady chorus of responsibilities that define her daily life. “I didn’t want dramatic revelations. I wanted people to understand things naturally and enjoy the film,” he says. “People should laugh, have fun, but still get the point,” he adds.
His approach to the characters follows the same gentleness. There are no villains here — only people shaped by habit and the roles they have inherited over generations. “They’re just carriers of old traditions and society’s expectations,” he says. “Eventually, like Ashraf, everyone will change.”
A local cast
One of the film’s most striking features is its naturalistic tone — from performances to language. The director assembled a cast mainly from Ponnani, many of whom he knew through his earlier web series Tuition Veedu. He encouraged improvisation, gave actors space to inhabit their roles, and even positioned himself behind the camera to minimise self-consciousness. “My aim was to keep the performances natural. The film holds together because of those performances. I didn’t want anyone to feel like a camera was watching them — it had to feel casual and effortless.”
He says much of the film’s impact lies in how the community perceives it. Muhammed recalls shooting in neighbourhoods full of ‘Fathimas’, women who recognised themselves in the story. “Nobody asked why I was doing this,” he says. “They were asking themselves, ‘Why didn’t we do this?’ They were laughing and realising things. That’s when I knew this film would spark something.”
In another instance, he recalls a six-year-old boy at a Kochi screening who laughed through the comedy and clapped during a pivotal scene involving Ustad who finally lifts to turn the fan on without calling out to Fathima — a moment that assured the director that subtle storytelling can still land with all ages.
The film’s core is Fathima’s shift — from someone moving through life unquestioningly to someone who begins to look at her circumstances with clarity. The director says “it wasn’t ideology”, but exhaustion, that turned her into a feminist. “Fathima became a feminist because of lack of sleep,” says the director. “Those sleepless nights pushed her into awareness. Once something blocked her peace, she understood everything clearly. That’s where her return begins.” And that, ultimately, is what makes her Feminichi.