ARTMO MAG

The weary hand of a film projectionist in rural Maharashtra, adjusting the reel of a small-budget Marathi film, might unwittingly be triggering a micro-revolution. Not with a slogan or a gun, but with celluloid. Herein lies the seduction of regional cinema in contemporary India: its disarming modesty, its invisibility in elitist discourse, and yet its quiet potency in shaping sociopolitical consciousness.

As the multiplexes froth over with Hindi and English franchise drivel, the margins—linguistic, geographic, and cultural—are scripting a different narrative, one that India can ignore only at its peril.

While national media remains preoccupied with pan-Indian blockbusters and box office arithmetic, regional films—often made on shoestring budgets and distributed through fragile, inconsistent networks—are engaging directly with the lived realities of caste, gender, land, labour, and memory.

Unlike the pan-Indian “mass” films that manufacture consent through formula, regional cinema frequently unsettles, provokes, and critiques. This is not because regional filmmakers are inherently more virtuous—goodness knows, there are as many tropes to ridicule in the average Bhojpuri potboiler as in a Telugu action-fest—but because regional contexts make it difficult to ignore certain truths. As a result, regional cinema becomes a reluctant but powerful chronicler of change.

Take, for instance, the Malayalam film industry, which is currently experiencing a creative renaissance unmatched in the country. Films like Kumbalangi Nights (2019) and The Great Indian Kitchen (2021) do not simply tell stories; they deconstruct the very frameworks that normalize patriarchy and social ostracism.

The former, with its non-toxic male protagonist who cooks and cares, upends the template of masculinity in Indian cinema. The latter, a claustrophobic study of a woman’s domestic imprisonment, was so potent that it caused real-world discussions across Kerala’s households about unpaid labour and male entitlement.

Elsewhere, Marathi cinema has produced searing political commentaries that would struggle to get greenlit in the more commercially obsessed Hindi film industry. Fandry (2013), directed by Nagraj Manjule, explores the brutalization of Dalit lives in rural Maharashtra with a sharpness that refuses to dilute. The protagonist’s dreams of love and acceptance are crushed not in a melodramatic flourish, but through the banal, everyday violence of caste.

Manjule’s later film Sairat (2016) disguised its radical politics under the guise of a teenage love story, only to reveal itself as an indictment of the caste system that refuses to accommodate inter-caste unions—even among the young and supposedly liberated. Interestingly, Sairat‘s wide popularity among rural and semi-urban audiences also triggered conversations that were once relegated to NGO workshops and academic journals.

One might be tempted to counter: are these not isolated instances? Are we not romanticizing outliers?

The answer is best illustrated by the growing hostility these films face from established powers. In Tamil Nadu, the 2021 film Jai Bhim sparked a political war of interpretations. Based on real events, the film recounts the brutal police torture of a tribal man and the legal struggle that ensued. The film’s straightforward portrayal of caste-based violence and institutional apathy drew the ire of powerful communities and politicians, even leading to calls for boycotts. But its virality on OTT platforms ensured that the story reached far beyond Tamil Nadu, turning a regional injustice into a national reckoning.

What is particularly notable is how these regional films are increasingly using digital platforms to circumvent the chokehold of traditional distribution. Unlike the hegemonic control exercised by Bollywood producers over theatres and publicity, regional filmmakers have found a kind of subversive oxygen in OTT.

Telugu films like C/o Kancharapalem (2018) and Kannada films like Ondu Motteya Kathe (2017) found critical acclaim and nationwide attention not through theatrical release, but through Netflix and Amazon Prime. The irony is rich: the same digital imperialism that threatened to homogenize Indian tastes has, in some cases, become the accidental ally of diversity.

This influence, however, is not simply sociological; it is epistemological. Regional cinema is forcing us to rethink not just what we see, but how we see. Consider the Assamese film Village Rockstars (2017), which was India’s official entry to the Oscars. Made by Rima Das with non-professional actors and practically no crew, the film is not a sob story of the northeast’s poverty. Instead, it is a quiet, luminous tale of a girl’s dreams, shot in a style that blends realism with lyricism. It does not scream for attention; it invites you to listen. And in listening, you find yourself altered. That, too, is political.

Even the styles of regional cinema disrupt national expectations. Bengali cinema, often accused of being trapped in the nostalgic shadows of Ray and Ghatak, has recently found new avenues of critique through films like Herbert (2006) and Nagarkirtan (2017).

The former is a hallucinatory satire that questions our rationalist obsession with binaries—science vs. superstition, nation vs. alienation—while the latter is a tender yet brutal portrayal of queer love in a rigidly normative society. These films do not beg for empathy; they demand ideological confrontation. It is an approach that perhaps only a Bengali could romanticize as a spiritual heirloom, wrapped in intellectual melancholy.

Importantly, regional cinema is also less sentimental about the nation-state than its Hindi counterpart. Hindi cinema has long operated as an auxiliary arm of soft nationalism—from Manoj Kumar’s tricolor melodramas to today’s hyper-masculine military spectacles.

Regional films, in contrast, often present fractured relationships with the nation. Manipuri filmmaker Aribam Syam Sharma’s Ishanou (1990), and more recently Haobam Paban Kumar’s Loktak Lairembee (2016), portray lives caught in the crosshairs of militarization and environmental displacement. They offer no patriotic crescendos. They offer uncertainty, alienation, sometimes even contempt. And that, oddly enough, is what makes them so profoundly Indian.

Let us not forget that in a country where the idea of a singular national culture is both absurd and dangerous, regional cinema performs the democratic task of multiplication. It reminds us, like a good Rabindrasangeet performance gone slightly off-key, that beauty lies not in uniformity but in polyphony. Even within regional traditions, there is a constant internal critique—consider the rise of feminist Telugu filmmakers or the Dalit-led cinema collectives in Tamil Nadu.

None of this is to suggest that regional cinema is utopian. Many regional industries still suffer from internal hierarchies, gender biases, and populist excess. There are plenty of misogynistic Odia films or jingoistic Punjabi narratives to critique. But the difference is that regional cinema often carries within it the seeds of its own critique.

A Malayalam blockbuster may indulge in macho posturing, only to be countered the next month by a female-led indie film that dismantles the same tropes. This dialectic keeps the ecosystem alive. It is a chaotic, argumentative, occasionally exasperating cinema—and thus, it is India at its finest.

One might argue that this cinematic ferment is being ignored in the corridors of Delhi and Mumbai, where power brokers still determine who gets to be seen and heard. But like all good revolutions, the impact of regional cinema is not measured in awards or Twitter trends. It is measured in changed perceptions, in uncomfortable silences after screenings, in conversations around dinner tables where someone says, “Did you see that film? It made me think…”

So yes, the weary projectionist’s hand is part of something bigger. Every reel turned, every subtitle read, every local dialect spoken on screen, is part of an ongoing resistance—not against cinema as entertainment, but against cinema as anesthesia.