South films are more imaginative, says Naseeruddin Shah

Naseeruddin Shah believes the films coming out of the Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu industries are more imaginative and original than the ones being produced by the Hindi film industry. The veteran actor shared that even though South films ‘may be crass in their taste’, their execution was ‘always flawless’.

In recent years, films like ‘KGF’, ‘Pushpa: The Rise’, ‘Kantara’ and ‘RRR’ have gone on to surpass Hindi films at the domestic box office. Many Hindi films featuring A-list stars like Akshay Kumar and Aamir Khan have not been well received at the box office in the last year. Akshay’s latest release, ‘Selfiee’, opened to lower-than-expected numbers on Friday.

Speaking to a leading media house for an interview, Shah explained why he felt films from the South were performing better than the Hindi film industry and therefore had a larger appeal to the audience. He stated, “Even the commercial movies made in Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu are imaginative. They are original. They may be crass in their taste, but the execution is always flawless. I have been looking for this for a very long time. Even their song picturisation, even in those corny films of Jeetendra and Sridevi, as insane as it may be with hundreds of ‘matkas’ in a line, at least it was an original idea.”

“It wasn’t just a line of girls dancing, not quite together and one central dancer. So, I really think South Indian films work harder and it is no mystery why their films are doing better than most of the Hindi cinema,” he added.