What makes a small but noticeable cluster of Kannada films cause for much excitement and hope?

Kannada film Thithi has been basking in international limelight. Everyone – from Francis Ford Coppola and Aamir Khan to Anurag Kashyap – raved about and recommended it. It has completed nine weeks while Rangi Taranga has run for a year in theatres and did very well in the overseas market too. U-Turn is running successfully, having completed its 50th day. After an international premiere, it is also showing in Europe, Australia, and is all set for an online pre-ordered Vimeo release. Godhi Banna Sadharana Mykattu just released in North American theatres.

There is something brewing in Kannada cinema and is being labelled the ‘new wave’ by many. Surfing the wave are young filmmakers, most without filmi connections, no formal film schooling, who have lived off a regular diet of world cinema. These Kannada films, subtitled in English are cutting the north-south divide within the country and running in multiplex screens outside Karnataka. Many have won awards at international film festivals; overseas Indian audiences are paying to see the films in theatres in their resident countries. There is even a reverse osmosis of sorts, for once, with Kannada films being bought for remakes in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and Marathi.

At the Bengaluru International Film Festival this year, there were snaking queues and extra show demands for Thithi and Rangi Taranga. And to think Rangi Taranga’s debutant director Anup Bhandari, a software engineer, was dreading getting back to the IT industry after seeing the film’s first day collections! On July 3, the film, with murder, intrigue, spirits, and alternate realities, completed a run of 365 days, and Anup, whose father is a TV serial producer-director, is all set to announce his second film. He re-released the film with an international cut in the USA, U.K., Singapore, Europe and Australia. “Our films are working because people wanted something new,” says Anup. “While my film was different, at heart it was a true Indian film - it had romance, sacrifice, thrill. I consciously wanted to keep it that way. I wanted to connect with the ‘class’ and the ‘masala’ audience.”

Since 2013, there has been an attempt to turn Kannada cinema on its head. Some have urban themes, others are set in parts of Karnataka previously ignored. And these last two years their number is on the rise.

Most agree it all began with Pawan Kumar’s non-linear Lucia, which was also Kannada cinema’s first crowdfunded film. It drew attention as much for the freshness of its story and the way it was told, as it did for the way Kannadigas the world over pooled in money to help Pawan make it. It was followed up with films like Rakshit Shetty’s Ulidavaru Kandanthe, Anup Bhandari’s Rangi Taranga, S.D. Aravind’s Last Bus, Raam Reddy’s Thithi, Pawan Kumar’s U-Turn, Navaneeth’s Karvva, Hemant M. Rao’s Godhi Banna Sadharana Mykattu. Godhi Banna… is all set to be remade in Tamil and Telugu by popular actor Prakash Raj.

Suddenly psychological thrillers, alternate realities, horror themes and subtle dramas have found favour. Pawan Kumar acknowledges that the films made by his contemporaries “are collectively looking different and standing out. We have been extremely sensitive to real people’s real emotions.”

An engineering college dropout, Pawan stepped into theatre, wanting to be an actor, but often found himself behind the scenes. He turned to scriptwriting, before making his debut with Lucia. His second film U-Turn saw Bengaluru’s traffic chaos meet the supernatural realm and is running strong across India, with shows being slotted based on audience demands on social media. U-Turn has also had several shows in countries including the USA and Canada.

Of the Kannada films that hit theatres every week in Bengaluru, most star A-listers with devout fan clubs, are staple love stories, revenge family sagas, action movies, or those steeped in double entendre comedy tracks.

There have been filmmakers, who have tried to set their cinema apart. But the way this new crop of filmmakers has been able to directly seek out and establish a dedicated audience has been very different in the past three years. They are also far removed from the iconic parallel cinema movement of the 70s.

Film scholar and author M.K. Raghavendra agrees that “Kannada cinema could be going somewhere else with watershed films like Thithi. There’s a coming of age in some way, with a lot of potential and a different class of filmmakers. They give the old kind of cinema a go by.” He sees this trend as an indication of a new global Kannadiga gaining strength.

Raam Reddy is 26, from a political and business family, an economics grad who went to film school in Prague. Growing up, he never watched Kannada or Hindi cinema. “I wasn’t cinema oriented at all. I only watched world cinema in the phase while I was forming a creative opinion. Every country treats its cinema differently. I wanted a more holistic exposure to how every country’s director brings their culture into their cinema.”

Reddy waited for the film to “grow” before releasing it. That is something both Pawan Kumar and Anup Bhandari acknowledge as well -- the power of marketing and social media and its role in a film’s success. After all, beyond talk of these Young Turks pushing the envelope, you do get a kick when you see an FB post with pictures of Americans queuing up to see a Kannada film at an international film festival.