LIBERATING LOCAL CINEMA

The revolution has been televised. | Streaming services in the pandemic provided a long-overdue boost for regional Indian films cutting across borders.

- ARUN JANARDHAN

When the producers of the Tamil film Soorarai Pottru decided to release it on Amazon Prime Video last November—amid shuttered cinemas and an enraged Tamil Nadu Theatre and Multiplex Owners’ Association—its director was not the happiest person. Sudha Kongara felt that several rousing moments in her movie, which would have been otherwise boisterously celebrated in the cinemas with religious awe, would be lost in the solitude of domestic viewership.

She now says, in retrospect, the OTT (over-the-top) platform was the best thing that happened to the film. It went across borders, got dubbed in many languages, and earned a respectable IMDB rating.

Kongara’s desire got fulfilled two months later when three shows of the film were held at the Chennai International Film Festival. She experienced every vociferous reaction from the crowd that she had anticipated. “I got my closure,” she says, laughing. “Now I have actors from [film industries across the country]—Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi—asking me to make films. How could it have been possible if not for streaming?”

Soorarai Pottru is just one of several films that were released straight on a streaming platform over the last year and a half because a theatrical release was not possible. Major stars like Suriya, also one of the producers of Soorarai Pottru, and Dhanush, who was sitting on big-budget films, bowed down to streaming services rather than wait for better times—in part due to growing pressure from financiers. Blockbuster films like Vijay’s Master got the frenzied reaction in cinemas—the first major Tamil release of 2021, in January—but also raked up the numbers when it released online.