Director: Chidambaram
Ten friends on a group trip become the center of a real-life rescue story in Manjummel Boys, a 2024 Malayalam adventure-thriller directed by Chidambaram. Based on true events, the film turns a cave accident into a tense study of loyalty under pressure.
What is Manjummel Boys about?
A group of childhood friends from Manjummel travel to the Kodaikanal hills for a break, and their trip takes a terrifying turn when one of them falls into Guna Caves, a pit so deep and dangerous that no one has ever been pulled out alive. With rescue teams unable to reach him quickly, the rest of the group has to decide how far they are willing to go, testing decades of friendship against a race against time.
Cast & crew
Soubin Shahir and Sreenath Bhasi lead the ensemble as two of the friends forced into impossible decisions, with Balu Varghese, Ganapathi S Poduval, Lal Jr., Deepak Parambol, Abhiram Radhakrishnan, and Arun Kurian filling out the rest of the group. The cast plays the friendship as lived-in rather than performed, which is part of why the crisis lands.
Context & significance
Manjummel Boys became one of the biggest Malayalam box-office successes of 2024, drawing attention across India for dramatizing an incident that actually happened to a group of young men from Kochi. The film's IMDb rating above 8 reflects how strongly the story resonated beyond its home industry, helped by practical cave sets and sound design built to make the pit itself feel like a character. Word of mouth pushed it well past its home state, and it went on to be dubbed into several other Indian languages, a rare crossover for a regional production of its size.
Where & how to watch
Manjummel Boys is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, so Farsi-speaking audiences can follow the rescue in their own language or with the original Malayalam audio. The film's page is free to browse; streaming the movie itself requires a K-Time account login.