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Kurkuma

Original title: Kurkuma
Participated in: MIDPOINT Shorts 2024-2025
Country: India

An ambitious Indian immigrant tries to win over his girlfriend’s friends by cooking them a traditional meal in an old Brandenburg mansion. When he accidentally leaves a kurkuma stain on the host’s white marble counter, he is consumed by guilt as the stain starts to haunt him in mysterious ways.

Kurkuma follows Mahmood, a 31-year-old Indian immigrant in Berlin. Mahmood aspires to join Berlin's elite social circle and takes a cook-for-hire job to impress his girlfriend Lisa’s friends at a dinner party in Brandenberg. Mahmood cooks Tamil food and accidentally leaves a kurkuma stain on the white marble counter. Despite his efforts to clean it, the stain spreads all over the counters and onto Mahmood, taking a life of its own. He tries to enjoy the party, but is consumed by the fear of the consequences of his mistake, seeing the stain everywhere. As the party progresses, the guests’ behavior becomes bizarre, smearing each other with food and turning into food-poisoned zombies. When Lisa finds out about his mistake, she reacts extremely and Mahmood finds her in the bathroom, now jaundiced and washing her stained hands obsessively. Driven to the brink, Mahmood spends the night scrubbing the stain, only to find everyone, including Lisa, normal in the morning. He leaves the mansion, seemingly free, but just as he takes the train, he sees the yellow stain all over again.

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