[3][4] Jallikattu was premiered on 6 September 2019 at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival and received widespread critical acclaim.

[8][9] Lijo Jose Pellissery received the Silver Peacock-Best Director trophy at the 50th International Film Festival of India.

[13] It was included in The Hindu's top 25 Malayalam films of the decade and is widely regarded as one of the defining movies of the New Wave Movement.

[14] Kalan Varkey is a butcher in a rural village in Kerala who meets with his assistant Antony before dawn each day to slaughter a buffalo and prepare its meat for sale in the market.

The crops at the rubber plantation are trampled, a drink vendor's cart is smashed, and the village's bank and convenience store are both destroyed.

Antony is unhappy to see Kuttachan back in the village; in a flashback it is revealed that before the two men had been rivals over Varkey's sister Sophie.

As Kuttachan prepares for the hunt by chopping up a metal bucket handle into pieces of buckshot, the villagers argue over which of them deserves to land the killing blow on the buffalo.

Kuriachan, a wealthy man who had been planning an elaborate feast of buffalo dishes for his daughter's wedding, ventures out to try and find some chicken instead—he is seized by a group of workers who strip him naked and bring him to the hunt as a good luck trophy.

This kicks off a desperate pile-on, as dozens of men—holding lit torches and bearing crude weapons—jump on top of each other, stabbing both the animal and each other as they form a huge, writhing mass.

The website's consensus reads: "Jallikattu uses a violent conflict between man and animal to set the stage for a story that's as visually haunting as it is rich in subtext.

"[21] Sajesh Mohan of Onmanorama wrote "After Ee.Ma.Yau., Lijo Jose Pellissery has again opted to saunter through the innate nature of humans in an off-kilter manner.