Author: Syed Sultan Ahmed, Chairperson of TAISI & Award-Winning Filmmaker
In November 2024, a Malayalam film titled Sthanarthi Sreekuttan quietly entered theatres. On the surface, it’s a playful coming-of-age story set in a government school, but within its frames was a design decision that has unexpectedly sparked change; a V-shaped classroom seating arrangement replacing the conventional rows of desks.
This wasn’t a cinematic gimmick. It was a visual provocation. And it worked. Within weeks, schools in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Punjab began re-evaluating their own seating layouts. Principals and teachers started asking: Can changing how we sit change how we learn?
For me, this is the perfect example of cinema’s ability to plant design ideas into our collective imagination. It’s the moment where storytelling meets space-making, and it’s a reminder that the way we build learning environments is deeply tied to the way we think about education.
Cinema as a Catalyst for Change
Cinema has a way of entering the public conversation faster than reports, guidelines, or academic papers. A film doesn’t just tell us what’s possible, it lets us experience it emotionally. In India, several films have triggered tangible changes in how we think about schools. Taare Zameen Par shifted perceptions of learning differences. Hichki opened dialogue on teacher adaptability. Iqbal reframed rural aspirations.
At School Cinema and the School Cinema International Film Festival (SCIFF), we have seen this power repeatedly. A well-crafted film can make an educator reconsider their approach to discipline, a parent can rethink how they speak to their child, or a policymaker sees the need for a different kind of learning space.
The Power of the Learning Space
Government school classrooms across India – where nearly 50% of our children study – are typically designed in rigid, standardised layouts: rows of desks facing a single authority point. This arrangement, inherited from the industrial age, was never meant for collaborative, inquiry-based learning. It symbolises hierarchy. It separates the “front benchers” from the “back benchers”, a cultural shorthand for who is seen as attentive, capable, or disruptive.
Interestingly, Indian culture has always placed deep value on spatial design and its impact on behaviour. Ancient principles like Vāstu Shastra guide how we position places to eat, sleep, pray, and meet within our homes. The sanctity of these spaces is seen as integral to harmony and wellbeing. Just as the pooja room holds a place of reverence and the angaan (courtyard) fosters connection, learning spaces too carry an energy that can either elevate or diminish the experience within them.
The V-shaped arrangement depicted in Sreekuttan disrupts the inherited classroom hierarchy in the same way Vāstu re-imagines domestic harmony, aligning the space to serve human connection. Students face each other, not just the teacher. It signals inclusion, fosters dialogue, and subtly shifts the teacher’s role from authoritarian to facilitator. From a design perspective, this is more than furniture placement, it is a change in spatial philosophy.
Symbolism Meets Practicality
While the symbolism is powerful, the practical realities can’t be ignored. V or U-shaped seating works best in smaller classrooms. In overcrowded government schools, where 50 or more children often share a space, such arrangements require either reduced class sizes or additional classrooms, both significant infrastructure challenges.
But that doesn’t mean change is impossible. Schools can:
- Introduce movable furniture to allow flexible configurations.
- Use zoning within classrooms to create spaces for group work, discussion, and reflection.
- Rethink the teacher’s position in the room to reduce the “command-and-control” dynamic.
Even partial changes in spatial arrangement can shift classroom culture.
Design Awareness for Educators
One often overlooked aspect of teacher training is spatial awareness; understanding how physical space influences behaviour, participation, and engagement. We train teachers in pedagogy, technology, and emotional intelligence. But we rarely train them to use the room itself as a teaching tool.
Architects, designers, and educators should work together to integrate spatial literacy into professional development. Public-private partnerships can be key here, pairing design professionals with government schools to create cost-effective, flexible layouts.
Cinema as a Design Provocation
The most interesting part of the Sreekuttan story is that no education department mandated this change. It wasn’t born of a grant or a policy directive. It began with an image, a fictional classroom, projected onto a screen that challenged a hundred years of habit.
That is the unique power of cinema in education. It bypasses bureaucracy and lands directly in our shared imagination. It allows us to “see” a different future before we build it. At School Cinema and SCIFF, we deliberately design films to do this; to make the audience not just think differently, but also to picture themselves living differently.
From Reel to Real
Rearranging desks may seem like a small act, but it is also a declaration. It says: We are rethinking who holds space in the classroom. It shifts the focus from control to connection, from passive listening to active engagement.
Cinema can be the spark that lights such shifts. It invites us to imagine, to experiment, and to re-design the spaces where our children spend the most formative years of their lives.
In that sense, Sreekuttan hasn’t just told a story about a mischievous boy, it has reminded us that the way we arrange our learning spaces is also the way we arrange our society. And sometimes, change begins simply by turning our desks to face each other.
