MUMBAI: For years, regional cinema has been given secondary treatment as compared to the show and pomp of the burgeoning world of Hindi cinema , be it in the sheer number of movies produced every year or just the level of exposure. But there seems to have been a tectonic shift in the paradigm – given the number of regional films hitting the market over the last few years and creating box office waves. Sairat and Bahubali were movies that paved the way and proved the mighty power of the local language.
Yoodlee Films, one of the youngest production houses in the country, had sensed this shift a while ago and decided to leverage on this continuing trend from the very onset. Having produced some 15 movies in only two and a half years, the move to assign importance to local language movies was inevitable. According to Siddharth Anand Kumar, Vice President - Films & Events at Saregama India Ltd, for the production house, regional cinema is going to be a focus area. “We are strongly looking at regional cinema as we are convinced that making cinema in local languages will help us reach a wider and different cross-section of the audience. While some of our regional language movies – namely Tamil and Marathi are already in the works, we are looking at many other local languages to tell stories in.
Yoodlee Films’ released two films previously in the South market : the critically acclaimed Tamil film KD and the Tamil-Malayalam bilingual Abhiyuum Anuvum. Three more, namely Habbadi and Zombivali in Marathi and Super Senior Heroes in Tamil are in the making. Zombivali has already garnered much interest when it releases its first look a few weeks back, given that it will be the first Marathi horror comedy featuring zombies. The movie is directed by Aditya Sarpotdar, and has a power-packed cast of Amey Wagh, Lalit Prabhakar, and Vaidehi Parshurami.
Siddharth adds that regional cinema has might have stories rooted in a particular milieu but they are powerful narratives which cut across language divide. “Regional cinema is also seeing big names investing in it and there is sense of innate pride in putting forth a project of one’s language and culture in the mainstream. Viewers are no longer seen through a sieve of language anymore. All they want is an unique story – one which works at a human level and that they can relate to” he added.
The shooting for Zombivali is currently continuing in Latur, Maharashtra and Super Senior Heroes and Habaddi is in various stages of post production.
