Mumbai: A panel discussion was held on the “Future of Cinema Distribution in India and Worldwide” on day three of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Film Festival in Mumbai. The session saw a discussion on various aspects of film distribution, including the impact of OTT platforms and the change in viewing habits brought by the pandemic.

The panellists were SCO Film Festival jury member from China Ning Ying, 91 Film Studios founder, CEO Naveen Chandra, film producer Sunir kheterpal and Producers Guild of India president Shibashish Sarkar.

Sarkar mentioned how Hindi cinema must ensure its reach in the dubbed market by appealing to larger audiences with relevant stories. He was also optimistic about OTT platforms and recognised their contribution to the enrichment of quality content. He also discussed how consumer expenditure has been impacted by inflation and recession globally. He describes how this has led to fewer people going to movie theatres after the pandemic. Naveen Chandra adds that a new wave of digitisation has created “individual critics” within every household. Reviews are posted within seconds, and this creates its own set of challenges for the movie. He also narrated how regionalisation of global cinema has impacted audience tastes and cited the example of how a Korean movie won the best movie at the 2022 Oscars.

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Kheterpal chimed in by stating that there are no big or small movies, but only good and bad cinema. He adds that the essence of cinema is to make a good film. Ning Ying spoke of a new challenge posed by big stars to global cinema. “Big stars create predictable gambling for the producers. However, they suffer when a film suffers badly at the box office,” she says. Similarly, she states that post pandemic China has been looking inwards when it comes to audiences since the huge population of China creates a strong market for domestic cinema.