Appetite for foreign festival faves limited to OTT in India

This year’s Oscar nominees are making a buzz, and cinemas in most metros are gearing up to release these films. However, even though these movies are internationally acclaimed, a look at the box office numbers over the years shows that Oscar nominees and other festival favourites find very few takers in theatres. In the past couple of years, streaming platforms’ viewership stats indicate that there is a growing appetite for global content in India.However, industry experts say that demand for critically acclaimed films only exists for OTT and not cinemas.
During a session titled Challenges & Scope of Promoting Festival Films in Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) countries in Mumbai last month, speakers shared that there is a clear distinction between the massy films that the Indian audiences prefer watching in the theatres and the award-winning films that they watch on OTT.
‘PEOPLE MOSTLY GO TO CINEMAS TO WATCH MASSY CONTENT’
Karan Taurani, cinema business analyst, says that people mostly go to the theatres to watch massy content, while niche content is watched on OTT platforms. “One needs to be clear about the difference between cinephiles and moviegoers. Festival favourites are loved by cinephiles and not the average moviegoer. It needs some big names to pull anaverage moviegoer to the theatres. We have a small segment of the audience that watches English films, but it shrinks even further when it comes to foreign language films,” he adds.
‘INDIA IS A TOUGH MARKET FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILMS’
A Deadline report stated that India has always been a tough market for foreign language films. “The situation has deteriorated during the pandemic when Indian audiences started to expect most films to pop up on OTT platforms and became much choosier about what they’d step out for to watch,” it added.
Ashwani Sharma, Distributor, Impact films, said he believes that once a film gets noticed in a film festival, cinephiles want to watch it in India. However, it doesn’t always lead to footfall in cinemas. “We recently released Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero, but the film didn’t get a great response,” he said.
‘PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO PAY TO WATCH GOOD CONTENT’
Sunil Doshi, Producer, Alliance Media & Entertainment, says, “Why is there so much resistance for people to pay for good content? I remember there was a 13-minute standing ovation for a film at Cannes and I ran to acquire the rights for its India release. We released it in India with so much passion in nine metros, but it barely had 500 people watching it. But when it was shown for free at IFFI and other film festivals, it was houseful. ”