An amateur Indian chef tries to win over his Berliner girlfriend’s friends by cooking them a lavish meal in an old Brandenburg mansion. But when he leaves a kurkuma stain on the white marble counter, he is faced with supernatural consequences as the yellow stain takes a life of its own. 

Kurkuma follows Magesh, a 31-year-old Indian who lives in Berlin and works for KultServ, a soulless “culture-for-hire” app, and dating a Berliner woman named Lisa. Magesh aspires to join Berlin’s artsy social circle, and so he takes a cooking job at Lisa’s friend Tobi’s immersive art party at a Brandenburg mansion.

It’s Magesh’s chance to shine—or so he hopes. The dinner goes surprisingly smoothly… until he spills kurkuma on Tobi’s pristine marble counter.  At first, he brushes it off – it’s just a small stain, and the guests seem to love his food. But the yellow stain defies all efforts to clean it, and starts spreading uncontrollably in the form of a creeping mould across the kitchen, then onto Magesh himself.

Magesh tries to suppress his growing panic, as the mould begins to follow him everywhere. Soon, the party’s atmosphere shifts. Guests start acting strange—smearing food on themselves and spiralling into bizarre, zombie-like behaviour. Terrified, Magesh searches for Lisa and finds her covered in the yellow mould and obsessively scrubbing her hands raw. He barricades himself in the kitchen and spends the rest of the night frantically scrubbing the countertop.

By morning, the chaos is gone, the guests are all asleep, and Lisa seems calm and normal. Exhausted and wondering if he imagined it all, Magesh leaves the mansion. As Magesh waits at the train station with a cup of coffee, a KultServ notification reveals Tobi has downvoted him for the kurkuma mishap. Magesh looks up from his phone, smiling slightly, as his eyes flash a bright, eerie yellow.