Angamaly Diaries

2001: Vincent Pepe is a resident in Angamaly, which is a medium-sized suburb of Kochi near the airport. During the middle school, Pepe and his friends put together an unofficial "team", a kind-of-pretend gang. They hero-worshipped the leading team of their area at that time, which was led by Babuji and his lieutenant Thomas, and are used to work out with them and listen to their advice on fighting and strategy. As young men, Pepe and his friends get into their first fight with outsiders, who were bothering the neighbourhood girls.

2008: Pepe also starts his first sweet romance with a local girl named Seema, whom he had known since school days. However, the innocent period ends when Babuji is killed by two local boys Ravi and Rajan who are then sent to prison.

2013: Pepe still has the same friends and Thomas, Babuji's friend, has become a member of their team in a kind of adviser capacity. Pepe is seriously dating a nursing student from Germany and looking for a way to build a business that can support himself and his friends. They start a pork business by just buying pigs from Ravi and Rajan, who have become the leading merchants in the neighbourhood after their return from prison.

Later, Pepe and his friends start their own pig farm and set up a rival wholesale business to Ravi and Rajan. During a discussion between the two groups, Pepe and his friends and Ravi and Raman's young followers led by Ravi's brother-in-law get into a fight, where Pepe accidentally kills one of them. To resolve the court case, Pepe's team has to turn to increasingly illegal activities to raise money to pay off Ravi and Raman and their friends. They open an illegal poker hall and manage to raise funds. With the case hanging over him, Pepe feels obligated to end his relationship with the nursing student.

At this point, Lily "Lichi" David, who is Pepe's old friend's older sister, returns to the area, where she starts spending more time with Pepe despite the court cases hanging over him. The court case is settled, but Pepe is still in danger because the man he accidentally killed has cousins who have come to Angamaly for revenge. Ravi and Rajan act as go-betweens and try to keep the situation calm, but it is still a problem and Pepe needs to leave the town. While Pepe is waiting for his Dubai visa to come through and celebrating a festival, they give the final payoff to Ravi and Rajan who pass on a portion to the cousins of the victim. However, the cousins are still angry and plans to attack Pepe after they receive all the money they can.

2014: During the evening festival celebrations, the cousins attack Ravi and Rajan as they learn that they will only receive a small proportion of the money Pepe used to pay them off. During the fight, the leader of the cousins, who is also Ravi's brother-in-law, is chased into the fireworks display and everyone watches in stunned silence as his body is blotted out by thousands of fireworks. Two years later, Pepe gets married to Lichi and works as a construction worker in Dubai, where he still calls home regularly and also misses his life in Angamaly.

The film introduces 86 new actors and the audition was held at different parts of Kerala, especially at Kochi. Actor Chemban Vinod Jose wrote the screenplay. The filming started on 11 October 2016 in Kochi.[3] Angamaly Diaries is Vijay Babu's first sole production after the spat with his business partner Sandra Thomas.[4][11]

The film's music was composed by Prashant Pillai, with lyrics by P. S. Rafeeque and Preeti Pillai. The full movie soundtrack was released on 23 February 2017 and consists of 9 songs: six original and three alternate versions.[12]

The film also received high praises from the film fraternity.[18] Mohanlal wrote "Happened to watch Angamaly Diaries and I'm impressed by the way the movie is made. Brilliant acting by every one and Kudos to the whole team and to Chemban Vinod Jose and Lijo Jose Pellissery". Prithviraj Sukumaran lauded it as a "stunning piece of film making" and praised its "original writing". Nivin Pauly applauded the casting, performances, story calling them "so refreshing and real". Karthik Subbaraj called the film as "Super Fantastic" and lauded it, saying "Writing, Performances & Filmmaking Crafts at its best". Anurag Kashyap called it as "an extraordinary film" and tagged Angamaly Diaries as his film of the year so far.[19]

• Angamaly Diaries at IMDb