Sruthi Hariharan and late Sanchari Vijay’s Nathicharami is ending its Netflix run

Director Mansore’s National Award-winning film Nathicharami’s contract with the streamer is running out in a few days

Sruthi Hariharan in a still from Nathicharami

Nathicharami, which won five National awards, including Best Feature Film in Kannada (2018), Best Female Playback singer (Bindumalini), Best Lyrics (Manjunath S for Maayavi Manave), Best Editing (Nagendra K Ujjani) and Special Mention for Best Actress (Sruthi Hariharan), was among the few Kannada films available to stream on Netflix. However, that is now set to change in the coming days.

Director Mansore recently took to social media to say that Nathicharami’s five-year contract with the streamer was coming to an end. According to Mansore’s post, the last day to watch Nathicharami on Netflix is January 27. “After completing 5 years streaming contract our movie #Nathicharami will be available in @NetflixIndia till jan 27th only. They don’t want Kannada movie for extended,” he wrote.

The streamer is widely known to be averse to picking Kannada content, with Nathicharami joined by films like Ayana, U-Turn, Mundina Nildana and Govinda Govinda only. All other titles available with Kannada audio on Netflix are not Kannada originals. Even Kantara, for instance, is only available in the Hindi version on the streamer. A quick check reveals that Ayana and Mundina Nildana are also on their last leg, while U-Turn is still available.

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Nathicharami, which has Sruthi Hariharan in the lead, along with the late Sanchari Vijay, is a film about a young widow’s struggle with loneliness and physical desires. The narrative follows how she, Gowri (Sruthi) seeks physical companionship without emotional attachment, while remaining fiercely loyal to her late husband.

Even though Nathicharami had been picked up by Netflix, Mansore struggled to find a streaming partner for both of his films thereafter, Act 1978 and 19.20.21, and it was only recently that he managed to make them available, albeit, not on any popular platform. As of now, these films can be accessed on the entertainment apps of most mobile network platforms.

No takers for OTT rights of Mansore’s 19.20 .21: ‘They don’t want realistic Kannada content’

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