Bollywood films rock the local box offices

Bollywood offerings are no longer a niche market but have entered the mainstream in Australia.

Ramadeep Kaur and Bhupinber Chauhan ahead of the screening of Bollywood film Ardass Karan. Picture: David Geraghty

In the decade the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne has been running, Bollywood films have gone from niche to mainstream amid a dramatic increase in the number of India-born people calling Australia home.

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan will be visiting Australia this year, and its highest-earning movie of the year to date, Kabir Singh, a romantic drama about an alcoholic surgeon who goes on a self-destructive path after his girlfriend is forced to marry someone else, has grossed more than $1 million in Australia.

About a dozen other Indian films round out this year’s top 100 grossing films in Australia.

The rise in popularity comes as the number of India-born migrants has increased substantially. According to the 2011 census, 295,000 people in Australia were born in India. By the 2016 census, the India-born population had almost reached 455,000.

Festival director and distributor Mitu Bhowmick Lange said the strong stories of Indian films helped drive their success, not just a larger India-born audience.

“It’s been increasing systematically pretty much every year,” she said.

“I started in 2010 with almost 15 films a year. Our films are now being screened everywhere, it feels mainstream.”

Ms Bhowmick Lange will bring about 50 Indian films to Australia this year.

She acknowledged the broad perception of Indian cinema as “song and dance” was partly accurate but said there was something for everyone.

“There are unique stories that are coming out,” she said.

“Beautiful escapism, optimism and hope in a lot of our films, that’s very positive and comforting in times like this.

“Quintessentially Indian cinema is quite escapist in nature and very romantic in nature, not just in lead characters (being) romantic, but in a sense of hope.”

She said Australia had climbed to the fifth-largest market worldwide for Indian cinema, and while distributors faced the same battlefield of an overcrowded market, streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon provided another opportunity for audiences to discover Indian films.

The highest-grossing Indian film Dangal ($2.6m in Australia) was a biographical sports film about a father who trains his daughters to be wrestlers at the Commonwealth Games.

The film won the inaugural Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award for best Asian film.

Newlyweds Ramadeep Kaur and Bhupinber Chauhan last week checked out Punjabi-­language film Ardaas Karan at Village Cinema’s Sunshine cinema in what Ms Kaur hopes will be the first of many movie dates.

“We are from India and plan to go to any new movie released,” she said. “We try to go every week. My husband likes to go to the movies.”

Ms Kaur said she liked films that showed her culture but also occasionally went to watch an English or Australian film.

The founder of the Indians in Melbourne Facebook group, ­Aashath Kaamil, said a lot more Indian films were showing in Australia now and there was a greater awareness by Australians compared to when he arrived in 2008 as a student. “It’s getting much better … Now a few people actually know who the cast is.”