Filmmaker Unnikrishnan Avala speaks with the clarity of someone who has lived several lives at once: teacher, writer, documentarian and now the director of a film entering one of the most competitive sections of the International Film Festival of Kerala. His second feature, Thanthapperu - Life of a Phallus, has been selected for the International Competition at the 30th IFFK, appearing alongside Sanju Surendran’s Khidki Gaav (If on a Winter’s Night) as one of the two Malayalam entries this year.
Unnikrishnan's story begins far from the world of cinema. “From Kozhikode, Perambra,” he says, “but living in Malappuram for the past twenty to twenty-two years.” Then he adds something that feels quietly intriguing. “I am still a school teacher here. I take leave from time to time to make films.”
He recalls Thanthapperu’s origins as a difficult period. “When I attempted this film, everything felt dark. It was not even in Malayalam primarily, and there was anxiety about how to bring it to an audience. But the film is part of my life, so I was confident about screening it.” His concerns echoed a broader frustration. “The general public is still not ready to watch films that deal with serious themes unless they come with a loud background score that completely dominates the visuals and performances,” he says, adding, “Try watching those commercial blockbusters without the background score. It becomes difficult to sit through.”
Despite foreign interest, he insisted on premiering Thanthapperu in Kerala. “A world premiere outside India might have been better from a business point of view. But after it was selected for IFFK, we wanted its world premiere to be in Kerala. It is a story that needs to be seen and experienced here first,” says the filmmaker, who sees the film as “the long call of someone who has lived here for more than forty years, documenting a way of life that deserves attention.”
The seven-year gap after his acclaimed debut Udalaazham emerged from uncertainty rather than design. He describes how directing was never part of his original path. Writing, poetry and teaching shaped him, but newsroom editors often questioned the realism of his reports. “Why did they think my writing was exaggerated when this was what I had truly seen?” he wondered. That question pushed him into documentary filmmaking, which felt honest, though screening such films in Kerala was carried out in a disrespectful manner. “You often end up playing them from a laptop with a microphone held to the speaker,” he says.
Feature filmmaking took shape slowly. Offers arrived after Udalaazham, but many came with commercial expectations he could not accept. “Many approached me with commercial motives,” he says. When he suggested subjects he cared for, producers redirected him toward lighter themes. His teaching job became his safety net, allowing him to ask what kind of filmmaker he truly wanted to be. The script that became Thanthapperu stayed with him like a persistent weight. “I needed to make this film to free my mind,” he says.
What followed was a long, delicate process. The film centres on the Cholanaikan community, Asia’s only remaining cave-dwellers and one of the smallest tribal groups in Kerala. Their lives, he says, are defined by “a natural dignity” and a freedom from external authority. “Every person among them carries the sense of being a king. They follow nobody’s instructions.” Because of this, he says, casting outsiders was never an option. The people on screen had to be members of the community itself, not representations of them. One of the very few familiar faces in the cast is acclaimed filmmaker Jeo Baby. Unlike Udalaazham, where actor Mani could live with him and learn through observation, no such immersion was possible here. Communication remained unpredictable and entirely on the community’s terms.
A breakthrough came through Vinod Chellan, the first Cholanaikan to complete graduate and postgraduate studies. When Unnikrishnan shared the idea, Vinod immediately recognised it. “He said he knew many people whose experiences were similar.” With Vinod as co-writer, the project shifted from detached observation to a lived narrative. Community members corrected him whenever anything felt off. “It became a new kind of learning experience,” he says.
Then tragedy struck when they were in the final stages of filming. Actor Poochappara Mani, who played a key role and was one of the driving forces in guiding the actors from the community, was killed by an elephant during production. The director feared the film would collapse. But the community, he says, came to him with startling clarity: “This was Mani’s dream, too. You must finish it.” Their insistence, and even their offer of financial help, moved him deeply. He says their conviction kept the project alive at its most fragile point.
Language was another battle. Cholanaikan speech, which he describes as one of the earliest Dravidian languages, is spoken by barely 200 people. Some producers suggested shifting to Malayalam or Hindi. “That was unacceptable to me,” he says. “One of my main goals was to archive the Cholanaikan language, which is an unusual blend of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Tulu and other influences.”
Sync sound was mandatory. Scenes were repeated for audio issues, visual problems or the natural irregularity of non-actors. Over three years, the cast learned to inhabit their roles. “Almost like professional actors,” he says. Some even became part of the direction team. The collaboration deepened into friendship, with cast members often visiting his family in Nilambur and Malappuram.
He lights up when asked about the title. Thanthapperu is simply “father’s name”, familiar from everyday use. The English title Life of a Phallus underlines the film’s thematic questions. “It raises the question of what the life of a male organ, one that has matured for sexual life, truly is,” he says.
The film also addresses gender imbalance within the community, tracing it to a historical wound: forced sterilisation during the Emergency. “The government had clearly instructed that the programme should not be implemented among tribal communities,” he says. “But to meet quotas, forcible vasectomies were carried out on people who were economically and socially disadvantaged, including tribal men.” He notes that the long-term effects on these groups remain unstudied.
By the time Thanthapperu was completed, something had shifted. The film had ceased to feel like an outsider’s attempt to capture a world; instead, it became a work that helped prepare a few people from the community to tell their own stories in the future. As he puts it with quiet satisfaction, “This film may have come from my impulse, but by the end, it felt like they were the ones carrying it forward.”
Thanthapperu arrives at IFFK, shaped by grief, collaboration and six years of patient, often precarious work from a filmmaker who never aimed for the position but grew into it step by step. For Unnikrishnan, the selection carries an added resonance. “The fact that a film made by someone like me, without formal training in filmmaking, has been considered by the jury for the International Competition alongside the work of a trained filmmaker like Sanju (Surendran) is especially heartening.”
(Thanthapperu has cinematography by Mohammed A, editing by Jinu Sobha, art direction by Ambily Mydhily, sound design by Arun Ashok and Sonu KP, and music by Janaki Easwar and Rithu Vysakh.)