Kamal Haasan delivered a speech as a special guest at the JioHotstar South Unbound, the streamer's new endeavour in the South Indian cinema industry, the other day. The streamer has entered an agreement with the Tamil Nadu Government and pledged to make an investment worth 12,000 crore across the four states in the South. Speaking about the bridging gap between regional and national cinema, the actor and Rajya Sabha MP said that there is no such thing called regional cinema any longer. "Regional is becoming the new national and ethnic, the new international," Kamal Haasan stated. He added that stories based in places such as Madurai, Malappuram, Mandia, and Machilipatnam are not part of regional cinema any longer but rather are "national cultural events".
Then, Kamal cited the nationwide popularity of Rishab Shetty's Kantara, Jeethu Joseph-Mohanlal's Drishyam, Allu Arjun-Sukumar's Pushpa, and Prabhas-SS Rajamouli's Baahubali. "A film rooted in coastal Karnataka's folklore like Kantara can electrify the whole country. In Malayalam mystery, like Drishyam, where an ordinary man outwits extraordinary power, crosses borders effortlessly. A Telugu saga like Baahubali or Pushpa becomes everyday vocabulary from Mumbai to say even Malaysia."
Kamal Haasan also mentioned his 2022 film Vikram with Lokesh Kanagaraj and his 2024 production Amaran, starring Sivakarthikeyan, as examples of films that became popular outside of the state. "The relentless manhunt of Vikram or the tender courage of Amaran shows that what truly travels is not budget but sincerity. Stories that are rooted yet resonant," he said.
According to Kamal, the success of the aforementioned films signifies that there is no substitute for authentic storytelling. "Authenticity is the currency that can never be demonitised," he said.
