In a conversation I had with him this week, writer-director Jeo Baby said that his film The Great Indian Kitchen, which has been making waves across India this fortnight, was rejected by Netflix and Amazon Prime Video without any reason being offered – this is why it is on the currently little-known, new Malayalam-only streaming platform, Neestream. This immediately brought to mind an unnamed filmmaker who told The Hindu’s Athira M earlier this month that the reason why a bunch of new Malayalam-focused OTT platforms have come up during the pandemic is that “big stars and big banners have become the criteria for some of these (multi-language platforms) to purchase a Malayalam movie”. Such yardsticks for selection will deprive non-Malayalam speakers of the best of Mollywood because they entirely miss the point of the Malayalam New New Wave, which is that it is determinedly not star-driven. For proof, note how Jeo Baby’s