On Day 3 of the Cannes Film Festival, the India Forum panel session on ‘India: The Content Hub Of The World’, saw a discussion on increasing acceptance of Indian content among global audiences and a debate over how Indian stories should be positioned for the international audience. Should India give a more international flavour to content to gain wider acceptability, or be unapologetically Indian in the tonality of what it makes? The session is over, but the debate continues.

In his keynote address, Anurag Singh Thakur, Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting said that Indian content has been appreciated by the global audience, since as far back as 1946, when Chetan Anand’s film Neecha Nagar won the Palme d’Or (then known as Grand Prix of the International Film Festival). A decade later, in 1956, Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali won the Best Human Document award.

“India intends to give the global audience a flavour of the country’s cinematic excellence, technological prowess, rich culture and illustrious heritage of storytelling,” he said, while discussing how the country is set to manifest into the ‘content hub of the world’.

While talking about how India should approach the global market and audience, Prasoon Joshi, CBFC chairperson emphasized that India can follow the Korean approach of storytelling – in the sense that the content need not lose its local cultural connect.

He said, “How can I take India and what can be produced in India and make it palatable for the global market and reach out to that market? That’s what Korea did with K-pop or K-dramas. They reached out with a distinct Korean flavour catered to the world market. Every culture in the world has something to offer, I would hate a world which is standardized. Another thing that’s important is that India understands diversity. We are so used to diversity.”

Scott Roxborough, Europe Bureau Chief, The Hollywood Reporter, was not convinced on some nuances and pointed out the fact that though China has an incredibly strong domestic market and is now the second largest box office territory in the world, it has still not been able to really find global acceptance, even though it makes very distinct films about its culture and history.

“They (China) have not really managed to cross over to the international market, and I would argue that India hasn’t either yet, despite having a very long history of cinema, and having great traditional storytelling. The type of Indian storytelling that is so appealing to the Indian market has not yet crossed over to the international market. ”

Scott also made the point that there should be a point beyond which governments should perhaps not get involved in the space of culture. CBFC member and actress-producer Vani Tripathi Tikoo, who was moderating the event, asked Apurva Chandra, Secretary, I&B, “Scott says the government should not be getting involved in culture, and we were discussing yesterday about education and creation of opportunities in cinema, in governance terms, what do you think should be happening? How much involvement should governance have in terms of creation of content? How does it interconnect with you and the consciousness around governance?”

Chandra said that he would like to respond to Scott as a film buff and not as a government officer. Sharing examples of Indian films that resonated with the global audience, he added, “NFDC (National Film Development Corporation of India) was the producer of The Lunchbox, a very very typical story of the Mumbai suburb, and Mr And Mrs Iyer, a film on Hindu Muslim unity. There have been a lot of stories which the world has been interested in, like Lion, Life Of Pi,and Slumdog Millionaire – that are all by foreign filmmakers but are typically Indian. And then apart from that, there are a lot of Indian films that are getting attention in other parts of the world – 3 Idiots or Dangal did very well in China. I met Ahmad Bolchin, who is a producer of RRR in Dubai, and he said that he is translating RRR into Persian, distributing it in Iran. In Dubai, they are interested in Indian serials, and would like to dub them in Arabic. That’s how Indian stories are travelling in the Middle East, in America and in other parts of the world.”

Veteran filmmaker Shekhar Kapur, Prasoon, and R Madhavan were all convinced that the flamboyance, the melodrama and the cultural rooting of content made in India, or by Indians, should not be something that is treated apologetically.

Underlining the social and emotional USPs of content rooted in India, Kapur said that human beings are melodramatic people and “we Indians perhaps even more so, and there is no need to be defensive about that. For us (Indians in particular, and Asians in general) everything is mythology”.

He added, “In the West, there is some kind of shyness when mythology comes up. I did a film called Elizabeth (1998), my first film outside India and I am thinking – how am I gonna do this? This is the most famous queen in the world and I am an Indian filmmaker! I was like, actually, I have a mythic idea and to me everything about Elizabeth is mythic. And when I was shooting it everybody said, ‘Shekhar, it is so melodramatic’, and I said, ‘No, it’s mythic’. Reviews also said that it is a very melodramatic film. I said, ‘Yes!’ They said it is a Bollywood film, and I said, ‘Yes!’ And then we got nominated for nine Oscars and Cate Blanchett became one of the biggest stars in the world.”

Kapur pointed out that there is this conflict between the West and the East and the reason Chinese films are not coming abroad yet is perhaps not because they lack a connect but because the film critics in the West have not yet learnt to celebrate the idea of living mythically.

Scott responded by making the point that succeeding in the international market comes from translation, like what Kapur did – take a very western story and telling it in a very Indian way. He said, “What you did with Elizabeth was a very compelling translation of Indian cinema – emotional, melodramatic and mythic cinema-making, with a western story. You were able to combine that and translate the language into something which was then understandable for the international audience.”

He said that it is not that Chinese cinema is not producing big distinct cinema, but that the international audience doesn’t understand that language and culture. He added, “I would argue that this is what Korea has done. They tell very Korean stories, but they have taken so much western influence to their storytelling that they are very easily translatable, and very easily understandable. Parasite, for me, could have been a Spielberg movie. It is told in a very Korean way with a very specific Korean setting, but they have managed to find a translation. And that’s what I think India needs to do ifit has to go international with storytelling, and that doesn’t mean to be untrue to the core or mythic, but you can’t expect audiences to just understand the culture.”

Madhavan also reiterated the point of being unabashed about not tailoring content to deliberately make it more globally palatable. “One of the ways that content becomes international and consumed is the fact that it becomes aspirational. Koreans have become successful because they are unabashed about how they don’t want to appease the rest of the world. They are very Korean in their nature – and that’s why my son wants to see it. I think if we are able to make those stories aspirational, of which we have many opportunities in India, we will be as much a global player as Hollywood is. ”

To ensure that Indian stories are not lost in translation and effectively reach foreign audiences, producer Philippe Avril advised to encourage co-production across countries.

Indian musician Ricky Kej – who has won two Grammys, in 2022 and 2015, both in the Best New Age Album category, and both in collaboration with international artistes – pointed out that some of the best films narrating Indian stories have either come from Indian filmmakers who lived abroad or foreign filmmakers who told an Indian story, and hence, collaboration is the way forward.

He added, “My first major collaboration (Winds Of Samsara) was with a South African musician (flautist Wouter Kellerman), for which I won a Grammy (in 2015). My second collaboration was this year with Stewart Copeland, a former drummer of The Police from America. I won my second Grammy for that. And both albums are very strongly Indian. It is just that I got a new perspective on how to dress up the songs. The same could apply to films. I think collaboration becomes very important to break cultural barriers. ”