Mai Selvarj’s brilliant Bison: Kaalamaadan (a deity), marks him out as one of India’s great contemporary directors. In his fifth feature (the Tamil film opened theatrically on Friday worldwide, with English subtitle options on bookmyshow), Selvaraj fully surpasses the promise of his powerful, moving earlier films — Pariyerum Perumal (adapted as Dhadak 2), Karnan, Maamannan and Vaazhai (Banana). He’s a rare master of that most challenging genre, the mindie film — mainstream + indie film — with social realism, tackling issues of caste, with a sports drama, father-son story, gangster saga, and action thriller, with stars/well-known actors, songs, choreographed sports and flecks of romance — all organically fused together, in a rooted, rural milieu.

Bison is a sports drama about a kabaddi player, but he elevates it with so much more. Sure, the film is about caste, but also about how much our society has imbibed the poisonous inheritance of generations of unquestioned prejudice and violent feuds, that can reduce all your hard-won achievements of years to ashes. It is a fictionalised story inspired by Manathi Ganesan, who rose from obscurity to play kabaddi for India at the Asian Games in Japan in 1994, here played by Dhruv Vikram as Kittan. The film opens with the Asian Games, where Kittan represents one of India’s finest players, yet he is asked to sit it out during a key match against Pakistan, until someone intervenes on his behalf. The story of his journey follows as a flashback.