Title: Bleat!
Foreign Title: Kattu!
Year: 2025
Country: Malaysia/Philippines/France
Language: In Tamil with English subtitles
Director: Ananth Subramaniam
At this point in time, when the requirement of absolute loyalty to an authoritarian figure has become a dominant theme in our society, it is easy to see a parallel with an ancestral culture’s deity who demanded and, as in Malaysian-Tamil director Ananth Subramaniam’s tale, still demands an unreserved allegiance from its followers. Karuppa is one such powerful and widely worshipped guardian deity in the oral tradition of the Tamil and the Tamil-Malaysian villagers, where an elderly couple is discovering that their sacrificial goat, Big Boy, against all odds, has become pregnant. It’s more a problem of contemporary proportions than Papa and his wife, Marapan, are prepared for, facing an unprecedented test of faith – should they submit to their tradition and kill it anyway or suffer the consequences of he who wields the sword revenge. Sound familiar? In turn hilarious and heartfelt, their efforts to resolve the dilemma are secondary to the exploration of the event’s meaning: “In a non-ordinary situation, you got to think outside the barn. It must be the end of the world.”
Only four Malaysian feature films have ever made it to Cannes. This year, Ananth Subramaniam’s Tamil culture-infused Bleat! is the first Malaysian film to compete in Cannes’ shorts event — one of 10 films selected from 2,340 submissions.
