Bollywood is no match for India’s new wave cinema

THE SIGNATURE MOTIF of Kantara: A Legend - Chapter 1, India's second-biggest box-office success of 2025, is a primordial scream.

- ANDY MUKHERJEE Bloomberg

It may as well be the sound of old Bollywood in its death throes, or the birth pangs of a new industry. Kantara, described by its writer-director Rishab Shetty as "faith, culture, and devotion in all its glory," isn't standard Bollywood fare. For one thing, the film wasn't made in Mumbai. Nor is it targeted primarily at a Hindi-speaking audience.Filmed in Kannada, the story is about a mysterious forest - and the preternatural forces that reside in it. When they aren't fighting a greedy landlord, forest dwellers dress up in colorful costumes and exotic headgear and enter a trance through their dance. That's when they let out their bloodcurdling screams.

Kantara follows the commercial success last year of Pushpa 2: The Rule, a violent, stylised action drama about sandalwood smuggling, and Kalki 2898 AD, a futuristic dystopia. The two Teluguthrillers came out of Hyderabad. The Kantara franchise - the new movie is a prequel to a 2022 sleeper hit - is also from the south. What used to be confined earlier to the boundaries of regional cinema - with limited exhibition elsewhere - is now mainstream.