Moothon

The story is about a 14 year old child, Mulla from Lakshadweep who travels to Mumbai in search of his elder brother, Akbar who left the island to Mumbai many years ago. Mulla is a mischievous child who quarrels with his classmates and is often scolded by Moosa (his current guardian).This makes Mulla leave the island by taking a boat at night in search of his brother. He gets hit by a wave in the sea, but somehow manages to board a ship to eventually reach Mumbai.There, he is sent to an orphanage where he befriends Raju. Raju tells Mulla about his mother Rosi and where he could find her. Mulla leaves the orphanage the next day in search of Raju's mother in the hope that she could help him find his brother. Mulla finds Raju's mother to be a prostitute who later provides him shelter and livelihood selling tea. One day, when Mulla was resting on the street after work, gets kidnapped by a local goon known as "Bhai", who is involved in child trafficking and drug dealing. Later, Bhai sets up Mulla to deliver drugs. But on being spotted by a cop, he flees away dropping the package.This enrages Bhai which makes him slap Mulla. But he soon realises that Mulla is his sister who came looking for him formerly known as Akbar, although Bhai does not reveal this to Mulla. Bhai warns Mulla to stay inside until he comes back. One of boys from the street enters the house looking for Mulla while she was bathing and finds out that Mulla is, in fact, a girl and falls in love with her afterwards. The story backdrops to Bhai's life in the island as Akbar. He lives in laskhwadeep and is a performer of the muslim ritual Kuthu Ratheeb. During a performance, he makes eye contact with a young man named Ameer. Later he confronts Ameer who is a mute and the two eventually fall in love. But this upsets Akbar's relatives and Moosa, who warns Ameer to stay away from Akbar. Ameer gets married but he wants to leave the island with Akbar and settle in Mumbai. But Akbar refuses to leave which forces Ameer to commit suicide. Akbar approaches their sister Aamina who runs a dance bar with her husband in Mumbai to take care of Mulla, but she refuses. So he leaves Mulla to his transgender friend Lateef to take care of her. The don threatens to kill Akbar and his assistant Salim, if he did not receive the money lost for the dropped package. But Akbar claims a bigger assignment to pay the debt. He is assigned with 20 other thugs to transfer a huge amount of money to a middleman, but fails to do so as he is ambushed by another gang in a vehicle chase. Mulla leaves Lateef and goes back to Bhai's shelter only to realise that Bhai has been caught by the police. Salim uses this opportunity to sell the girl as promised. Soon after Akbhar releases this, he beats up Salim asking about Mulla's whereabouts. Salim takes Akbar to the place where he sold the girl and Akbar is shocked on seeing something (may be Mulla) and gets shot at the same instance (probably by Salim). Later the boy from the street who fell in love with Mulla knocks on the door of a house to find Mulla who is now dressed up as a girl.

• Nivin Pauly as Akbar/Bhai
• Sanjana Dipu as Mulla
• Shashank Arora as Salim
• Sobhita Dhulipala as Rosy
• Dileesh Pothan as Moosa
• Jim Sarbh
• Roshan Mathew as Ameer
• Anjaly Devi as Ameer's wife
• Harish Khanna as Karim
• Sujith Shankar as Latheef
• Melissa Raju Thomas as Amina
• Vipin Sharma as Warden
• Ajay Indrajeet Yadav as Pikku
• Mini as Akbar’s mother

The screenplay was written by Geetu Mohandas originally under the title Insha' Allah: In Pursuit of Akbar. The story was about a teenager who is in search of his elder brother Akbar. For the script, Geetu won the Global Filmmaking Award at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, along with four other filmmakers. In January 2016, she announced that it would be made into a feature film in Malayalam and Hindi languages, and filming would commence post monsoon that year.[5]

In January 2017, cast and crew were revealed along with a poster. The title was changed to Moothon (meaning: elder brother, in Malayalam). Produced jointly by Aanand L. Rai for Colour Yellow Productions and Ajay G. Rai and Alan McAlex for JAR Pictures, the film will be distributed by Eros International. Anurag Kashyap wrote the Hindi dialogues. Nivin Pauly plays the leading role along with Shashank Arora as the negative lead. Geetu has mentioned in her interviews that Nivin was not the first person to come to her mind to play the protagonist, after completing the screenplay. She toggled with many names and eventually, the role fell into Nivin's lap. Geetu has reiterated that in this movie, she was not looking for actors but wanted to cast the person in the actor. Her husband Rajeev Ravi handles the cinematography. The film marks Geetu's feature directorial debut in Malayalam.[1] Geetu call the film an "adventure drama", even though she do not believe in confining it into a clear-cut genre, saying "it can always turn into something else".[6]

Filming in Mumbai was concluded by second week of May 2017.[7] Filming resumed in Lakshadweep in May 2018.[8] It was completed on 14 May 2018.[9]

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2019, with the cast and crew in attendance. It was screened at the Mumbai Film Festival on October 18, 2019. Pauly has stated during an interview that the filmmakers planned for Moothon released theatrically on 8 November 2019.[10]

• Moothon on IMDb