Sexy Durga. 2017. India. Directed by Sanal Kumar Sasidharan. In Malayalam; English subtitles. 95 min.
Sensational documentary footage of a temple festival honoring the goddess Muthumari Amman (an incarnation of Kali/Durga) captures her followers’ fervent devotion. A young woman named Durga finds no such love on the roadside in the middle of the night. She and her male companion are on the run for reasons unknown, and several men offer to take them to the train station. An evening of extreme danger and psychological torture begins to unfold as soon as they hop onto the strangers’ vehicle. Sanal Kumar Sasidharan won the Tiger Award, Rotterdam film festival’s top prize, for his brilliant Malayalam road movie/thriller/horror film, which toys with audiences’ minds in the tradition of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games.