The Great Indian Kitchen: With Director Jeo Baby & Cinematographer Salu K Thomas

The Other Banana

Once again, an early contender for one of the best films of the year comes from Malayalam cinema. The Great Indian Kitchen, written and directed by Jeo Baby, filmed by Salu K Thomas and edited by Francies Louis hit the exclusive Malayalam OTT platform Neestream last month. Starring Nimisha Sajayan and Suraj Venjaramoodu, a film rich in visual flourish, edited with finesse that uses pure imagery to convey its story, theme and politics, The Great Indian Kitchen hits right where it hurts.

It was a great pleasure to have director Jeo Baby and cinematographer Salu K Thomas join Aditya and Deepauk to talk about the film, how it was scripted, shot and edited and what were the influences behind the making of this film. Jeo and Salu touch on several things like having a script with editing patterns written down, improvised dialogues, finding the right house for filming, the influences of KG George's Adaminte Vaariyellu (1984) and Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Elippathayam (1981). Listen on.

You can find Adaminte Vaariyellu on Youtube here and Elippathayam here.