Imagine if a native Hindi-speaking person, unaware of Kannada culture had to decide whether Kantara should be made or not. Imagine if a south Indian supervisor said “No” to the Durga Puja scene in Kahaani (2012).
They would be one of the most horrible decisions in the history of filmmaking.
So is happening in the case of Netflix India. Indians have been making great films ever since they started making cinema. A big reason they failed to earn a global appeal is due to their rootedness in Indian culture. Almost all great classics fall into the same category.
But Netflix India is not getting this simple fact. When filmmakers are making a film then they make it for themselves or a particular section of the audience. In both cases, it has an essence of locality in terms of audience.
Director Harish Shankar has pointed out that the content supervisors at Netflix India are unaware of Telugu culture. Those who are responsible to greenlight Telugu movies/series don’t get the essence of what Telugu people like. Thus we are yet to see any decent Telugu originals on Netflix.
It is a very practical problem and needs to be sorted out as soon as possible. Because they can’t possibly be serving an audience without understanding them.
Hotstar, Zee5, and SonyLIV are so good/frequent in their non-Hindi content because they understand what people are looking for. Netflix India needs to do the same.