Why Indian films like Dangal and Toilet are so popular in China: similar problems
- Indian director R. Balki says recent successes are because Indian and Chinese cultures, especially their conservative rural values, can be very similar
- ‘Dangal’ especially sparked a wave of Indian-movie fever
Indian director R. Balki first came to Beijing to shoot an advert for an LG television at the Great Wall in 2002. How things have changed.
His latest visit to Beijing last month was to promote his new film Padman, an aspirational movie based on real-life Indian entrepreneur Arunachalam Muruganantham who invented a machine to make sanitary pads cheaply for poor women who would otherwise use old dirty cloths.
After attending public screenings for Padman in Beijing, Balki said he was overwhelmed by the response of Chinese audiences. “They were touched by the story of true love [between the entrepreneur and his wife],” he says. “They cried.”
Like many rural Indian women, Muruganantham’s wife insisted on using dirty cloths during her period to save money. It was out of love for her that Muruganantham, from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, overcame all obstacles – including derision from rural neighbours, poverty, his family disowning him and long separation from his wife – to invent the machine.
Whether Padman, which will be released in China on December 14, will follow last year’s Dangal in being another hugely successful Indian film in China is yet to be seen. Dangal, a film about Indian wrestling directed by Nitesh Tiwari, chalked up nearly 1.3 billion yuan (US$190 million) in China ticket sales. It sparked a wave of Indian-movie fever that has seen Chinese distributors bring a series of Indian films to the country’s big screens.
