Mayilaa

Mayilaa embarks on a journey as a travelling salesperson in Southern India to fulfil her expensive obligations. The only problem: she doesn’t know how to sell. A sharp yet heartwarming tale of a mother-daughter duo finding their feet on the road.

Shit happens. It’s equally frustrating, however, when it doesn’t. Mayilaa’s frail daughter Sudar suffers from severe constipation. Prone to sudden spiritual possessions, and praying for a solution, Mayilaa promises to offer a luxurious silk saree to her village goddess. But when she loses her job, the young woman is forced to start her own business to fulfil her vow. Her trade? Selling straw mats door to door, with her daughter in tow.

In her charming debut feature Mayilaa, Semmalar Annam crafts a deceptively simple neorealist fable set in the quiet stretches of rural Tamil Nadu in Southern India. As Mayilaa and Sudar travel from town to town on their rickety moped with their wares, they are confronted with the deeply entrenched male chauvinism and class divides that determine life in the region.

With humour and casual subversion, Annam’s film overlays the spiritual and the scatological, charting the two poles that bookend its characters’ experience. Yet there is plenty of love, solidarity and unexpected recognition awaiting mother and daughter on their humble entrepreneurial adventure. 

– Srikanth Srinivasan

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