While hosting the trailer launch event of KGF - Chapter 2 in Bengaluru recently, Karan Johar, said, “It’s high time we do away with all the ‘woods’ and look at the Indian film industry as one. ” He was clearly referring to big wide divide that has always existed between Bollywood – the grand daddy of Indian film industry – and all the other regional film industries in India.

What Karan said is just a rearticulation of what the Indian movie audience has already decided to do — to move on from just Bollywood and watch any cinema that entertains and engages them; never mind if it’s from Tollywood, Mollywood, Kollywood or Sandalwood, or any other self-styled ‘wood’. They have, in that sense, already done away with the so-called ‘woods’.

Film industries across the country may have been operating in silos, making their own kind of films, for their own kind of people. But the audience has made it clear that they’ll exercise their choice. And they’ve chosen good content that cuts across linguistic, cultural, and geographical barriers.

The Indian cinema lover no longer cares where the story is set, or where the star is from. Content is truly king. What else would explain the craze for Allu Arjun’s Pushpa: The Rise - Part 01? The tale of a tribal boy from rural Andhra Pradesh smuggling sandalwood to eke out a living while protecting his oppressed tribesmen is finding resonance across the nation.

Pushpa’s director Sukumar confesses that he had faith in the story and the format in which he told that story, but even he couldn’t have anticipated the love it received nationwide. “This just goes to show that no matter what language the film is made in, if you have strong content, it will resonate universally. Pushpa may seem like a story rooted in the place it’s set in; but the emotions it evokes are universal, and that is what is finding resonance across the nation,” reckons Sukumar.

Kichcha Sudeep, who is gearing up for the release of his pan-Indian 3D film, Vikrant Rona, points out that Thai, Korean and Chinese films managed to cross national borders and found an audience internationally long ago.

“Thai, Korean and Chinese films crossed these boundaries years ago. Jackie Chan became a name in Hollywood decades back, while China produced the Academy Award-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” says Sudeep, who is confident that Indian cinema is on its way to getting there.

A film that resonates with the audiences also means big bucks, as Visakh Subramaniam, who sold three-language remake rights for his production Hridayam to Karan Johar, recently discovered. “Hridayam may be a Malayalam film, but it has run for more than 60 days in Chennai. Pushpa is a story about a Telugu boy made in Telugu primarily, but it did good business in Mumbai, where it ran for 100 days in some places. KGF Chapter 2 and Vijay’s Beast both had early-morning fan shows planned in Kerala. So, there are definitely no barriers for good entertainers,” he says.

If the audience is looking beyond boundaries of language and region, then who are stars to say they’ll not take the leap and cross over? Hindi cinema is now welcoming actors from regional cinema with open arms. Raveena Tandon, who is returning to south Indian films after two decades, shares, “I’m so glad to see crossovers and multi-lingual films being made. The audience has always been open to it, and now, their needs are being met too. I think it’s about time we all came together to make one strong Indian film industry.”

Interestingly, ‘Indian film fraternity’ is a term that’s crept into the lexicon of stars all over the country of late. Following the massive success of RRR, Jr NTR spoke about a united film industry that can “revive the glory days of Indian cinema.”

NTR’s emphatic statement and the conversation around ‘Indian cinema’ embodies the fact that we have come a long way from an era where actors from the South were cast as side characters in big Bollywood potboilers.

“I remember a time when South actors were cast as bad guys in most Hindi films, or, roped in for some special appearances at best,” says director Raj Nidimoru of the famous Raj and DK duo. “Not anymore. Actors like Priyamani, Samantha, Neeraj Madhav and Vijay Sethupathi have all been reintroduced to Indian audiences via their work that’s cutting across regional barriers now,” says Raj.

Filmmakers agree that Baahubali and KGF catalysed audiences to sit up and take note of films beyond Bollywood. Lead actor Prabhas said, “I think our films should be categorized first as Indian films, and not language-wise.”

Actor Rana Daggubati is quick to point out that the digital format played a big part in uniting Indian cinema. “It all started with OTT, in a way. Commercial cinema was always made for the box office, because it costs a lot of money to release a film in theatres and to market it to audiences. Traditionally, there’s only so much you could do, only so many screens you could take it to. But with OTT, these films started reaching the drawing rooms of people across the country. Now, more than the language, the audience started connecting to the emotions of the characters; the story; the storytelling. Once they got the taste of it, they wanted more,” says Rana.

The pandemic only reinforced the power of the digital format, and worked especially well for smaller film industries like Malayalam, which never got their due despite the great talent and legacy of good

films. The Great Indian Kitchen, for instance, was made on a modest budget, but had content that resonated nationally that made the whole nation sit up and take notice.

Analysing the trend, director Jeo Baby says, “During the lockdowns, people sat at home and watched everything that came their way… Well, the fact remains that even today, it is hard to reach a platform that can give you access to a national audience, especially if you aren’t that big a name.”

But once you get there, your work will get the kind of eyeballs and the kind of creative freedom you could have never dreamt of, say filmmakers. As Raj Nidimoru points out, “In The Family Man, Samantha, who played a pivotal role, doesn’t speak a word of Hindi. Yet, it’s a series made in Hindi. Almost 50% of Season 2 of The Family Man was in Tamil. We didn’t care. We knew people would get over the subtitle reservation. This kind of freedom to tell a story the way it should be told was unthinkable even a few years ago. For us filmmakers and actors and technicians, there hasn’t been a better time to be here, in Indian cinema.”

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