At the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK) 2026, Ramith Kunhimangalam's 'It Was Here Before Our Time' has emerged as a notable cultural work for the way it frames Maari Theyyam as both ritual and record. Produced by actor-director Rajesh Madhavan, the film is positioned as a homage to a tradition that exists at the intersection of performance, faith, and community memory. In a festival landscape often dominated by contemporary social themes, the documentary stands out for its insistence that older cultural forms remain urgent, especially when they are threatened by distance, dilution, or neglect.
Ritual As Living Memory
The film's central achievement lies in its refusal to treat Maari Theyyam as a static relic. Instead, it presents the ritual as a living practice that continues to shape identity in northern Kerala. That distinction matters. Theyyam, in its many forms, is not merely a performance genre; it is a ceremonial expression that binds myth, ancestry, and local belief. By focusing on Maari Theyyam, Kunhimangalam's film enters a cultural space where art cannot be separated from devotion, and where the body of the performer becomes a vessel for inherited meaning.
The title itself, 'It Was Here Before Our Time,' signals the film's larger argument: that some traditions predate present-day cultural anxieties and survive precisely because they are rooted in collective continuity. In documenting Maari Theyyam, the film appears to ask what is lost when such traditions are reduced to spectacle, and what is preserved when they are approached with reverence and attention. That question gives the work analytical weight beyond its immediate subject.
A Festival-Ready Tribute
Produced by Rajesh Madhavan, the film also benefits from the credibility of a creative figure known to audiences across Kerala's film culture. Madhavan's involvement suggests a project that is not only artistically motivated but also conscious of the need to present regional heritage to wider audiences with care and authenticity. In the documentary format, that balance is especially important: the film must communicate the texture of ritual without flattening it into explanation alone.
IDSFFK has long served as an important platform for documentaries that engage with identity, memory, and social change. Within that context, 'It Was Here Before Our Time' fits a broader festival tradition of works that preserve cultural knowledge while also interrogating how such knowledge is transmitted. The film's attention to Maari Theyyam is timely because ritual arts across India increasingly face pressures from modernization, changing patronage structures, and the shrinking space for intergenerational transmission.
The documentary's significance is therefore not limited to its aesthetic qualities. It also functions as a cultural intervention, reminding viewers that heritage is not only archived in institutions but enacted in communities. By centering a ritual form that remains deeply embedded in local life, the film implicitly argues for the value of documentation as preservation, and for cinema as a medium capable of carrying intangible heritage into public view.
Beyond Folklore Framing
What gives the project its force is the likely tension between visual beauty and ethnographic responsibility. A film on Theyyam can easily become a collection of striking images, but the stronger challenge is to convey the emotional and spiritual density of the practice. The description of the film as capturing the "essence and mysticism" of Maari Theyyam suggests that Kunhimangalam is aiming for more than documentation; he is seeking atmosphere, context, and respect.
That approach matters in contemporary Indian non-fiction cinema, where cultural subjects are increasingly judged by how well they avoid exoticism. A documentary on ritual must do more than observe costume, color, and movement. It must recognize the social world that sustains the ritual and the belief systems that give it meaning. If 'It Was Here Before Our Time' succeeds, it will do so by allowing the tradition to remain legible on its own terms.
For IDSFFK audiences, the film offers a reminder that documentary cinema can still serve as a bridge between generations. It can preserve what is fragile without freezing it, and it can honor what is ancient without rendering it inaccessible. In that sense, Kunhimangalam's film is not only about Maari Theyyam. It is also about the responsibility of looking closely at traditions that continue to outlast the eras around them.