Worlds apart but moving closer

In Roland Emmerich’s 2012, an Indian scientist predicts the impending apocalypse, only for his country to be later destroyed by a giant tidal wave.

“For foreign films that possess a shade more subtlety than the likes of 2012, locating an audience can be tough in a territory that has only ever focused on the mass market”

Hats off to US studio ingenuity as the combination of this local reference, the special effects and the subject matter in a nation obsessed with significant dates, has made the film the biggest foreign hit ever in India. Last month it was packing out single-screen cinemas in rural areas that are usually only moved by local phenomena such as Shahrukh Khan.

But for foreign films that possess a shade more subtlety, it can still be an uphill battle to find an audience in India. It’s not that the audience doesn’t exist - it’s just that locating it can be tough in a territory that has only ever focused on the mass market. As a result, it can also be difficult to find local partners in India to co-finance and distribute foreign films.

Currently a slew of UK-India themed projects are in the pipeline from adaptations of novels The White Tiger and Six Suspects to Gurinder Chadha’s It’s A Wonderful Afterlife and Assassin Films’ East Is East sequel, West Is West. It’s not just the Slumdog effect that’s driving these projects, as many were in development before the success of that film. Creatively, UK producers are interested in a nation that is helping shape the 21st century, while financially they’re conscious of both its funding muscle and the size of its audience, which has previously been ignored.

However, as producers discovered at the recent edition of Film Bazaar in Goa, a huge gulf still exists between the Indian and European film industries.

India has signed co-production treaties with the UK and three other European territories, but they’ve hardly been used. Indian producers prefer to fully finance and are bemused by the patchwork of soft money that forms the bedrock of the European film industry. Why jump through hoops for this slow trickle of money, only to then have to share control?

Likewise, European producers struggle with the lack of transparency in India and the fact the local industry is so commercial and star-driven. The culture gap has also stymied Indian film-makers trying to break out internationally - they can find money at home but are pressured to make something that appeals to home-sick diaspora audiences.

But while Film Bazaar delegates sometimes felt like they came from different planets, they also started to find common ground at the event’s various programmes, including Primexchange, in which five European and five Indian producers explored whether their projects could be packaged to work in both markets.

One reason is financial -India has been hit by both recession and rising production costs, so local financiers are becoming more open to sharing risk and reward. They would also like a piece of the next potential Slumdog, both for the financial gain and the award honours that have so long eluded India.

And as one after another of the star-driven Bollywood films has flopped at the box office, they’re also more interested in producing for middle-class audiences with projects that may have international appeal.

The Europeans are also on a steep learning curve - at Primexchange they gained insights into the Indian financing system and the complexities of the local audience, which is not as easy to please as Khan and Emmerich make it seem. One conclusion they reached is that not all India-themed projects need to be set up as co-productions.

Indeed, a range of funding models is likely to emerge - Chadha secured financing from The Indian Film Company for It’s A Wonderful Afterlife, while West Is West producer Leslee Udwin has decided against a local partner.

Chadha’s film will be watched extremely closely, as in this precedent-driven industry, it takes just one successful collaboration to redraw the continental map.