The Kerala Story Review: Adah Sharma Shines in Brave and Balanced Film that Confronts Disturbing Realities

Director: Sudipto Sen

Cast: Adah Sharma, Pranay Pachauri, Yogita Bihani and others

Where: In theatres near you

Rating: 3.5 stars

In The Kerala Story, filmmaker Sudipto Sen picks up a communal agenda set in Afghanistan and shows it in the most disturbing way possible. During times when social media machinery is mostly responsible for religious tension, 'The Kerala Story' is a thought-provoking visual document which isn’t less than an eye-opener.

Shalini Unnikrishnan aka Fatima (Adah Sharma), a Hindu from Kerala and a nursing student, gets abducted and manipulated by Islamic vanguards, who convert her into an ISIS terrorist. To safeguard herself, she ends up in a petrifying jail.

'The Kerala Story' unravels the statistics attached to the whole nexus between the misinformed male youth of Kerala, and godmen, who support the ugly reality and terrorism across Afghanistan and Syria.

Sudipto churns out the frightening reality with finesse. His narrative creates uneasiness and unmasks the pain and slavery of innocent women belonging to different religions, who are forcefully converted to Islam.

It isn’t a light subject to choose and narrate, but Sudipto wins in almost every department. However, shooting the reality and presenting it in a cinematic setting could have been a task, which is why a few things seem unrealistic and unreasonable. A subject like this needs to be factually and politically correct and Sudipto packs in a solid punch.

Adah, who is known to be selective with her film choices, shines out with her performance throughout. She remarkably represents the set of girls, who get trapped in the blind faith of a religion. She beautifully adapts the Malayali accent, while speaking both Hindi and English.

Yogita Bihani steals the show in the climax scene and delivers a phenomenal gut-wrenching monologue. Pranay Pachauri is good, and Umar Sharif as a cop plays well in the given tight closeups. The rest of the cast does justice to their respective roles.

The Kerala Story is a depressing and painful watch, although Sudipto strikes the right balance by infusing easy-breezy moments through Shalini’s early life to ease the palpable sadness.