Stories from the Soil, Screens from the Margins

While Kannada cinema has oscillated between spectacular success and cultural stagnation, Assamese cinema has quietly survived on restraint, rooted storytelling, and individual resolve. Placed in conversation, these two regional film industries reveal how cinema responds to social crisis, institutional neglect, and the loss—or recovery—of cultural grounding. Their parallel journeys offer urgent lessons on what sustains regional cinema and what slowly erodes it.

Key Words: Survival, storytelling, crisis, restraint, cultural grounding.

Cinema plays a crucial role as popular culture in preserving linguistic diversity and making it accessible to everyday life. Our languages carry centuries of oral history, and film serves as a powerful medium to protect and promote them. It is within this larger understanding of cinema as a cultural vehicle—one that carries language, memory, and collective history—that contemporary developments in Kannada and Assamese cinema need to be understood, not merely through box-office numbers or legal disputes, but through the kind of stories that are being told and amplified.

            While there is an ongoing legal battle between multiplexes and the Karnataka government over capping cinema ticket prices at ₹200, there is an interesting twist that seems to be calming the tensions. Within ten days of its release, Kantara Chapter 1- a Kannada production—has been ranked among the top two most successful Indian films of 2025. Its 2022 prequel was also a massive success with over 400 crore business. Similarly, the KGF sequel, produced by the same banner, achieved tremendous commercial acclaim. But do these successes signal a Kannada cinema renaissance, echoing its golden past? Or are they flukes in desperate times?

      Among the four prominent South Indian film industries-Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu, over 200 films have been released in each (including OTT releases) by the second week of October 2025. As is tradition, Telugu cinema leads in commercial success with 10 films crossing the ₹100 crore mark, followed by Tamil with 8. Malayalam has 4 such films, while Kannada has only 2.

            Despite a high volume of releases, Kannada cinema’s success rate remains below 5%. Yet, within this small percentage, some of the most significant commercial records at the national level have been set. There appears to be little correlation between the quantity of Kannada films produced and their commercial success. The gap between film production and audience reception is widening. Kantara, despite not being a universally acclaimed film, has seen massive success-perhaps signalling a public embrace of native narratives.

            As an industry, Kannada cinema lacks a robust culture of cinema-goers, both in terms of elevating audiences and responding to contextual socio-political realities. Unlike Tamil cinema, where filmmakers like Pa. Ranjith or Mari Selvaraj engage with dominant ideologies through cinematic aesthetics, Kannada cinema still awaits such voices. Even its most prominent stars continue to be cast in violent narratives-a trend dating back to the late 1990s.

            Ram Gopal Varma’s 1990s Telugu gangster films influenced a wave of copycats in Kannada cinema, which paralleled the real-life underworld scene in Bengaluru. As real gang wars escalated, so did on-screen crime fantasies.  For nearly three decades, only violent films achieved commercial success in Karnataka with films like OM (1995), Majestic (2003), Jogi (2005) and KGF (2018 & 2022). Upper-class and middle-class family audiences, intimidated by this violent portrayal, stopped going to theatres.

            The male lead in the film Om (1995) teaches a lesson to his girlfriend by pouring acid on a plastic doll in the very first scene. In the final scene, the female lead becomes a victim of an acid attack by other rowdies. The film’s audio version (popular in the 1990s before the advent of CD and DVD players) was a massive success, and many audiences perceived it as real. Within the next two years, more than 60 acid attack cases were reported. This serves as a stark example of how cinema can directly influence the audience’s psyche. This points a finger at the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), which is supposed to ban such hyper-violent films. The Cinematograph Act, 2003, bestows this authority upon the certification board.

            The regulatory bodies governing Kannada cinema, the Chalanachitra Academy, various associations of producers and directors, and the Department of Information, which subsidizes around 100 films every year have done little to address such skewed cultural representation. There is no dedicated state body to monitor or ensure the quality of Kannada films, apart from award committees and subsidy-driven lobby groups.

            Even as the number of annual releases increased-from over 50 in 2000 to more than 250 in 2024, the quality of Kannada films declined. In contrast, Kannada art films have consistently earned recognition at national and international levels. However, these films often don’t reach cinema screens and hence are commercially untouched. This reveals a systemic neglect of artistic cinema-a result of limited budgets and marketing reach. As mass audiences drift away from theatres due to sheer violence on screen, they’ve become even more distant from art films. Small-budget filmmakers rarely attempt a second film due to the lack of commercial viability and financial returns.

            From a policy standpoint, Karnataka lacks a clear structure and infrastructure to promote and support quality films, unlike Tamil and Malayalam cinema. The Producers’ Association in those industries awards 100 short films with ₹1 lakh every year, providing aspiring filmmakers an opportunity to pitch their feature films through their short works. Such institutional hand-holding remains a distant dream in the Kannada film industry.

            Despite having the highest number of educational institutions in the country, Bengaluru’s youth remain largely untouched by serious cinema culture. The film society movement is either absent or confined to small circles. Instead of being nurtured by the local film industry, cinema culture has been hijacked by self-serving interests, let alone being integrated into school education for children, as seen in Kerala. However, recent successes like ‘Kantara’ and ‘Su From So’ offer crucial lessons for those hoping to survive in Kannada cinema.

            The recent Kannada comedy-horror film Su From So (2025) grossed over ₹130 crore, delivering an astonishing return on investment of 1900%. Made for less than ₹4 crore, the film featured no big stars-unlike Kantara's large-scale production. Raj B. Shetty, one of the film’s producers and actors, spearheaded an innovative promotional campaign and even appeared in a cameo-showcasing his commitment to his production. As an acclaimed actor, Raj B. Shetty is expanding his investments and empowering like-minded filmmakers.

            Interestingly, both ‘Kantara’ and ‘Su From So’ are rooted outside Gandhinagara-the traditional hub of Kannada cinema production and distribution office culture. Both the narratives are deeply rooted in coastal Karnataka, incorporating local dialects and cultural elements. Similarly, Thithi (2015), which received critical acclaim and multiple awards, was celebrated for its authentic portrayal of native life. While the first two films used actors from local theatre circuits, Thithi featured untrained locals. All three films revolve around regional rituals-from demigod worship to funeral rites and were embraced even beyond Kannada-speaking audiences.

            Isn’t this a clear direction for promoting good cinema? Perhaps the way forward for Kannada cinema lies not in blood-soaked action tropes, but in stories grounded in the soil-authentic, rooted, and deeply human. Institutional, unbiased support is essential for Kannada cinema and its culture to thrive beyond its drawn language boundaries.

            Even the scarce successful movies rarely make it to OTT platforms for extended visibility. There is no framework at the national level ensuring digital space for independent films. The state must recognize films as a cultural vehicle for its future and establish a necessary legal ecosystem to promote quality cinema.

       What becomes evident, then, is that Kannada cinema’s crisis is not merely about box-office volatility or audience fragmentation, but about how an industry responds to social upheaval and institutional neglect. This is where a comparison with Assamese cinema becomes instructive. While both industries have suffered from weak policy support, shrinking theatrical cultures, and marginalization within the national market, their cinematic responses to crisis have diverged sharply. Where Kannada cinema increasingly turned towards spectacle and violence to retain relevance, Assamese cinema largely chose introspection, social realism, and cultural memory as its cinematic language. Reading these two regional industries together allows us to understand not only what regional cinema can lose but also what it can preserve, even in the absence of power, capital, or infrastructure.

       With the new wave striking the Assamese film industry, a breath of fresh air is seen immersing the advent of this surprisingly new Assamese film industry. Assamese cinema, lesser known as Jollywood, has always centered on the socio-political upheavals of society and their changing trends. Most of the films often display the rural setup of a traditional village life, with the protagonist being depicted as a villager with destitution. The landlord, popularly known as Mohajon, would exploit the village with scarce means, and the turmoil would be felt within the family members. The early 1990s saw a significant loss to the film industry due to the shutting down of cinema halls amidst the state trying to grapple with the bandh culture called by ULFA. The period was also marked by a ban on all Bollywood films by the militant group, with the wave of the Assam movement still making its mark felt. Most of the unemployed youth joined the rebel group due to frustration and a lack of direction in their lives due to the growing socio-economic and political turmoil that engulfed the state.

       One of the outstanding films, apart from several others ranging from Jahnu Barua’s Halodhiya Soraiye Bau Dhan Khaye to Munin Barua’s Hiya Diya Niya which showed class differences to Zubeen’s popularly acclaimed movie Tumi Mur Mathu Mur, to Mon Jai depicted the social problems of unemployment and militancy that marked the society during that time. Even though the government’s lackadaisical attitude toward the film industry was known throughout, it didn’t deter the filmmakers from exploring newer gamuts. The recent ones being Amis by Bhaskar Hazarika and Taarikh by Himjyoti Talukdar, which flow into a newer trend marked by the genre of the new wave of Assamese cinema. Local Utpaat, Local Kundi 3 by Kenny Basumatary, blended the humorous fold into this genre. Mission China, Dr. Bezbaruah 2, Kanchanjungha, and Bhaimon Da ensured that the Assamese cinema industry does not go back to the realm of darkness anymore. The recent blockbuster Roi Roi Binale by Zubeen posthumously after his expiry made exceptional records for an Assamese film to surpass all the previous records. Not to mention Reema Das's Village Rockstars which went on to receive international recognition for its plot direction and setting. Even though there is very little intervention by the government in terms of infrastructure and investment, the art of filmmaking has not lost its ground due to the filmmakers' zeal and enthusiasm, keeping the art alive while at the same time displaying the rich cultural heritage of the state. It is time that, apart from the concert economy, which the state is putting its investment into, the government needs to turn its attention and make efforts to keep the Assamese film industry not just alive and sustainable but also share its robust growth. The challenges faced by filmmakers in the region include inadequate production infrastructure, language barriers, limited market access, and a lack of institutional support. Despite these hurdles, the state, along with the Northeast, remains a fertile ground for cinematic innovation and cultural storytelling. The Northeast holds millions of beautiful and unique stories. There is an urgent need for systemic investment in the region’s creative infrastructure. The state needs urgent access to OTT platforms to better market its films. Financial backing and marketing infrastructure are crucial for the growth of the regional industry. If Kannada cinema illustrates the dangers of abandoning social responsibility for commercial violence, Assamese cinema shows the risks of moral cinema without institutional scaffolding. One suffers from excess, the other from exhaustion.

            The future of regional cinema lies somewhere between these two trajectories: cinema that is socially rooted, aesthetically ambitious, economically supported, and institutionally protected. India does not need more pan-Indian spectacles masquerading as regional pride. It needs ecosystems where many small, honest, culturally specific films can survive, fail, and try again. Assamese and Kannada cinemas, when read together, are not marginal stories. They are warning signs—and possibilities—for the future of Indian cinema itself.

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