General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Thithi (ತಿಥಿ)

Thithi (ತಿಥಿ) is a 2015 Kannada-language comedy-drama film directed by Raam Reddy, an India–United States co-production about three generations of a rural Karnataka family reacting to the death of their 101-year-old patriarch, Century Gowda¹. The title refers to the thithi, the final funeral celebration traditionally held eleven days after a death in southern India, at which the film's three storylines converge²^•³. Made with a mostly non-professional cast, the debut feature won the Golden Leopard in the Filmmakers of the Present competition and the Swatch First Feature Award at the 2015 Locarno Film Festival, and later the Best Kannada Film award at the 63rd National Film Awards⁴^•⁵.

Key fact	Detail
Film	Thithi (ತಿಥಿ), 2015, Kannada language, India/USA, comedy-drama, 123 minutes¹
Director and writers	Directed by Raam Reddy; screenplay by Eregowda and Raam Reddy¹
Premise	After the death of 101-year-old Century Gowda, his son Gadappa, grandson Thamanna, and great-grandson Abhi prepare for the thithi, the funeral celebration held 11 days after a death²
Cast	Thammegowda S. (Thamanna), Channegowda (Gadappa), Abhishek H.N. (Abhi), Pooja S.M. (Cauvery), Singri Gowda (Century Gowda), mostly non-professional actors¹^•⁶
Setting	A small village in Mandya district, Karnataka; the screen village is named Nodekoppalu⁷
Major awards	Golden Leopard (Filmmakers of the Present) and Swatch First Feature Award, Locarno 2015; Rajat Kamal for Best Kannada Film, 63rd National Film Awards⁴^•⁵
Reception	IMDb 8.0/10 from about 2,900 votes; Rotten Tomatoes 100% Tomatometer (5 reviews) and 94% audience score⁸^•⁹

Spoilers

Story

The film opens with the death of Century Gowda, a foul-mouthed centenarian who drops dead just after making rude remarks about the village folk¹⁰. His three male descendants must arrange the thithi, the eleventh-day funeral celebration, while pursuing their own concerns².

Three generations, three preoccupations. Century Gowda's eldest son, Gadappa (the name translates as "Beard Man"), is a free-spirited old man who has renounced family obligations and wanders the village fields smoking cheap cigarettes and drinking brandy⁴. Gadappa's son Thamanna plots to sell Century Gowda's five-acre property, which has technically passed to his father, to relieve his financial troubles, and takes usurious loans from a moneylender to do so⁴^•¹⁰. Thamanna's teenage son Abhi neglects his duties to pursue Cauvery (Kaveri), a shepherd girl from a nomadic family settled on the town's outskirts⁴^•¹⁰. The three storylines intertwine and come to a head when the whole village gathers for the thithi².

Production

Raam Reddy, a writer-director from Bangalore, made the film as his first feature after graduating with a specialization in Direction from Prague Film School in 2013; his 2012 Telugu short Ika (Feather) had screened at close to 20 international festivals⁴. The screenplay grew out of Eregowda's knowledge of the local culture: Reddy said the funeral customs, gambling, hustling, and coarse speech patterns in the film came from Eregowda "knowing the culture inside out and writing the dialogue from experience"⁷.

The film was shot in Karnataka's Mandya district, in a real village called Nodekoppalu off the highway between Bangalore and Mysore; Reddy described the approach as "the whole village was a set"⁷. The cast is mostly non-professional, and Reddy said the planning was based largely on observing the community rather than inventing plot⁶. Doron Tempert was the cinematographer, Nithin Lukose handled sound and composition, and the film was edited by John Zimmerman and Raam Reddy¹. It was produced by Pratap Reddy and Sunmin Park through Prspctvs Productions and Maxmedia¹^•¹¹.

Release and reception

The film premiered at the 68th Locarno International Film Festival in August 2015, where it won the Golden Leopard for the Filmmakers of the Present competition, a section for debut and second features, and the Swatch First Feature Award from a separate jury¹². It screened at New Directors/New Films at MoMA and Film at Lincoln Center in March 2016, and played festivals including San Francisco, Seattle, Sydney, Mumbai, Palm Springs, and Marrakech⁶^•². Indian theatrical release dates differ between sources: the Kannada film database Filmibeat lists 6 May 2016, while PlayPilot lists 1 January 2016¹³^•¹⁴.

Awards in India. At the 63rd National Film Awards (for 2015), Thithi received the Rajat Kamal for Best Kannada Film, with a cash prize of ₹100,000 and a citation reading "A striking and realistically charming portrayal of life in a village, told in the idiom of comedy and surrealism"⁵. It was named Best Film at the Karnataka State Film Awards for 2015, where Ere Gowda won Best Dialogues and Pooja SM won Best Supporting Actress¹⁵. In September 2016 it was conferred the Best Film award at the closing ceremony of the 1st BRICS Film Festival in New Delhi¹⁶.

Critics received the film warmly. Rotten Tomatoes records a 100% Tomatometer from five reviews and a 94% audience score⁹, and the film holds an 8.0/10 rating on IMDb from about 2,900 votes⁸. The film critic MK Raghavendra, a National Award-winning critic and author of three books, called it "the best Indian film of 2015" for its sharp observation of everyday conduct in a contemporary village community¹⁷. MoMA's program note placed it "closer to Émile Zola than it is to Bollywood" and described it as affirming "the advent of a new realism within Indian cinema"⁶.

Streaming. The film streamed on Netflix from March 2017 until March 2021, after which it left the service; as of the most recent availability checks it is not streaming in India, the United States, the United Kingdom, or Canada¹⁸.

Style and themes

Reviewers located the film in a tradition of rural realism mixed with absurdism. Nandini Ramnath of Scroll.in wrote that viewers would see "echoes of European absurdists such as Federico Fellini, Jiri Menzel and Emir Kusturica in the yarn's cross-weave of exotic quirkiness and rural realism", and described the film as "a curious mix of anthropology, comedy and commentary on the futility of resistance"¹⁰. The Viennale catalog called it "an absurdist comedy of manners which uses death to make gentle yet stinging points about life"¹⁹.

The film's reliance on non-professional actors was a recurring point of praise. Reddy was credited with getting townspeople to "play versions of themselves", and reviewers noted that even the less polished lead performances came across as credible because of the writing¹⁰. The Wire's review argued that Reddy's achievement was to "allow a rural community to represent itself on-screen, although not as 'fact' through a documentary but as enacted fiction"¹⁷.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Indian films (individual works) › Kannada films of the 2010s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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