Women in Cinema: Notes from the South

trailer of Sani Qaidham Dropped five days ago for positive feedback. Keerthy Suresh stars as a former police constable who commits 24 murders in the Arun Matheswaran directorial. The last time she got such a response was in 2018, for greatness, when she effortlessly played the role of veteran Telugu actor Savitri. Despite winning the National Award for the biopic, it took four years for him to get another role commensurate with his talent.

However, things are changing with the rise of strong, women-led projects in South cinema. The success of directors like Sudha Kongara, Anjali Menon and BV Nandini Reddy and the series of stories they tell has a lot to do with it. As has the popularity of female superstars like Nayanthara and Samantha, who use their ‘popular’ films to tell themselves more weighty storytelling.

Read also:The Amazing Women of the Box Office – Telling It That Way

But some significant contributions have also come from actors like Parvati in Malayalam, Sai Pallavi in ​​Telugu and Aishwarya Rajesh in Tamil, who follow their own path. Fame doesn’t play a significant role in his film choices; Script and characterization. For example, Parvati gave UyareA brave role that focused on playing an acid attack survivor but also played a small but important role virusWhere she played the role of a doctor connecting the dots of the Nipah virus outbreak in Kerala.

telling better stories

Over the past seven years, Coimbatore-born Sai Pallavi has impressed audiences with her performances.

“Sometimes I feel like I expect too much. I’ve read a lot of scripts over the past year and most of them are about naive, kind girls. I hope that we are offered different characters. So that we don’t play the same kind of women, just with different faces. I crave characters like Revathi or Suhasini,” says the actor, who played a strong-minded village girl is Fida and of a child sexual abuse survivor love story, “If I’m going to build a house, I want it to be the way I want it to be. So, I choose movies that resonate with me, where I can enjoy the process.”

However, writers are taking more risks with what they build for the streaming platform. Especially because people who are used to seeing stories from around the world are now open to unconventional themes and bold writing. “Now you don’t need hero-centric films. There are different types of stories that can be told, and different types of casting. It will also see the development of new storytellers,” says Nandini Reddy. for example, Oh! baby, the 2019 Telugu film starring Samantha, came in Nandini’s way as the actor believed that a female director would bring a different perspective to the story. The film’s box office success is credited to his judgment call.

Nandini Reddy with Samantha and Lakshmi ‘Oh! baby’

market reactions

How do producers and marketers view women-centric films? Produced by Kiran Kumar, Distribution Head, Screen Scene Media Entertainment Sani Qaidham Before he sold it to Amazon Prime Video, he says that all that mattered to him was the script and secondly, the cast. “We knew it would be commercially viable and went ahead with confidence.” Undoubtedly, it helped that Arun Matheswaran had already become critically acclaimed of rock And his reputation in the market was strong.

This respect for a good script gives filmmakers the luxury to harness their energy the original Job: Telling good stories. “People are now more open to stories that are sharp, deep and with strong subtext. This gives me more energy to focus on directing,” says Priya V., whose Tamil anthology, AnanthamStreaming on Zee5.

The consultant writer from Mangaluru has been covering Entertainment Beat for over two decades.