The Kannada film industry was perhaps the biggest discovery of 2022. Even though the industry has a rich history of filmmaking for nearly a century, its presence was rarely felt across Indian cinema in the last few decades. The visibility of its films was so poor that many Hindi-speaking filmmakers, financiers and audiences didn’t even bother to make the effort to correctly pronounce the name of the language. Kannada even today is widely mispronounced as ‘Kannad.’
But the year 2022 was a watershed one for the industry. Kannada cinema emerged from the shadows and claimed its seat at the table. It’s no longer a passive participant, but an active force, which could influence the collective culture and filmmaking style of Indian cinema. This happened courtesy of two films: KGF: Chapter 2 and Kantara.
“The industry has become more popular now. If you do good movies you can reach a bigger audience, which was not the case earlier. Not many valued Kannada films outside Karnataka; they used to look down on us. Today, people sit up and take notice of us,” said filmmaker Pawan Kumar. In the past, he also tried to push the envelope when it came to how the industry responded to competition from other language films.
Pawan was at the forefront of the movement demanding the removal of the unofficial ban on dubbing other language films into Kannada. The practice, which came into existence over 60 years ago to protect the then relatively new Kannada film industry from its much bigger neighbours, evolved into a social norm. Even though there was no legally valid sanction against the dubbing, it was passionately discouraged behind the power corridors of Kannada cinema. It took the Supreme Court intervention and the constant effort of a few activists and filmmakers like Pawan to bring about a change.
Kantara is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
“There is no way you can ban something. I was not saying we need to dub other language films into Kannada to make money. (My…