All of India has gone gaga over two Indian productions — knockout song Naatu Naatu from the blockbuster hit RRR and documentary short film The Elephant Whisperers — winning top honours at the 95th Oscar Academy Awards held recently in Los Angeles. However, it’s pertinent to note that but for OTT (over-the-top) major Netflix co-producing The Elephant Whisperers, this heart-warming documentary wouldn’t have seen light of day. Ditto All that Breathes, another Indian production which was nominated in the documentary short feature category, was backed by a British producer and streamed on HBO.
These two Indian documentaries got their moment of glory on the Oscar stage thanks to foreign funding and support. Indeed, the advent of OTT platforms Netflix, Amazon, Disney Hotstar among others has been a major gamechanger for the Indian documentary films genre, which had few backers in a country obsessed with glossy song-n-dance cinema.
Curiously, foreign OTT production bosses are aware that there’s a huge, educated English-speaking middle class in India, within which there’s a sizeable minority (small in percentage but big in numbers) appreciative of documentaries which portray real-life stories rooted in the Indian socio-economic milieu. The Elephant Whisperers is drawn from the actual life of a tribal couple parenting two baby elephants in the forests of Tamil Nadu, and All that Breathes follows the life of two brothers who rescue injured birds in the national capital. These are intelligent stories for which Bollywood and its several regional clones have neither the time, funding nor patience.
The Oscar award to The Elephant Whisperers is an inflection point in Indian cinema, and marks a departure from mindless, logic-defying formula films churned out every year. RRR which featured the Naatu Naatu song is a formula film produced at a mind-boggling cost of Rs.550 crore. Ditto the Shah Rukh Khan starrer Pathaan, which is breaking box-office records.
What are the chances of the two documentaries and success of OTT platforms changing the mindsets of Bollywood badshahs and vernacular cinema producers in the near future? Nil.
