Naseeruddin Shah: South Indian films work harder, it’s no mystery why they are doing better than Bollywood

Naseeruddin Shah recently weighed in on why, in his opinion, South Indian films were doing much better than Hindi films. The veteran actor believed that even commercial South Indian films were imaginative and original.

In conversation with Indian Express, Shah opined that although he thought some South films were a bit ‘crass’ in taste, they benefited from ‘flawless’ execution. The actor said that even though the picturisation of songs in South films might seem ‘insane’ at times, the ideas behind them would always be original.

“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 said.

This is not the first time Shah has criticised Bollywood. At an event held last year, the veteran actor had said that the Hindi film industry had a tendency to make fun of a number of communities, even citing examples. He had called Bollywood ‘masters of stereotyping’, and claimed that Hindi films loved to make fun of others, but could not stand it when they themselves were being made fun of. Despite being more than a century old, Bollywood had ‘deliberately encouraged’ such stereotypes.

Shah was last seen in Kuttey, which marked the directorial debut of Vishal Bhardwaj's son, Aasmaan Bhardwaj. The film saw Shah share the screen with an ensemble cast, consisting of Arjun Kapoor, Radhika Madan, Tabu, Konkona Sensharma, Kumud Mishra and Shardul Bhardwaj.

The actor will next be seen in the ZEE5 series, Taj-Divided By Blood, which also stars Aditi Rao Hydari, Dharmendra, Sandhya Mridul, Zarina Wahab, Aashim Gulati, Taha Shah, Shubham Kumar Mehra, Rahul Bose and Dharmendra.The historical drama, which marks Dharmendra’s web series debut, will be released on March 3, 2023, and can be streamed on OTTplay as well. Abhimanyu Singh and Roopali Singh have produced the upcoming web series.