When one thinks of films with stories deeply rooted in the city they are set in, perhaps what immediately comes to mind is the quintessential Mumbai story full of dreams of stardom and a better life, a Kolkata film steeped in its history and arts, or maybe a Delhi movie where old and new, power and those without it, meet and clash. But what makes a ‘Bengaluru Film’, and where are the movies in which the city is not just a setting but a character in itself?
“We’ve seen what a Bombay film is, what a Kolkata film is, or even what a Kochi film is. We don’t associate Bengaluru that way, maybe because there haven’t been that many films that mainstream put Bengaluru into a character which have gone mainstream. I don’t know if Bangalore resists being a character, rather it is our perception,” says Vinayak Bhat, founder of Bangalore Film
Forum, which is set to host Bangalore - Cinema - City, from January 22 to 25, a festival seeking to highlight the films that put the spotlight on Bengaluru’s identity as a city.
It started when co-curator Ashish Rajadhyaksha came across an article about ‘lost urban films’ by film scholar Madhava Prasad. “In the early ’70s Kannada cinema, when people started making independent films, a lot of them were set outside the city. But in the late ’70s, you start seeing films that were set in Bengaluru. We initially wanted to show those films, but as we explored them, we decided to open it up,” he says.
The festival showcases a mix of mainstream and less-known films from the late ’60s onwards, painting a picture of Bengaluru through its social movements, stories of crime and gangsters, the IT wave and more. “Those late ’70s films give us one kind of story, but as you start exploring, you start finding more perspectives about the city. For example, Accident (1984, starring Shankar Nag) looks at politics and corruption, Nishkarsha (1993), which is a cop thriller, and then Aa Dinagalu (2007), which looks at the underworld of Bengaluru in the ’80s. These were the things we heard from our parents when growing up. But seeing that on screen makes the stories come alive. Pallavi (1976), too, gives you a different kind of look at this Bengaluru – set in a college,and about young people,” says Bhat. Other films being screened include the Dr Rajkumar’s classic Mayor Muthanna (1969) and Kabani Nadi Chuvannappol (1976) by PA Backer and ones that capture a Bengaluru’s more recent past like Prakash Belawadi’s Stumble (2003) about a family trying to survive the dotcom bubble burst and Gaali Beeja (2015) by Babu Eshwar Prasad which uses the conventions of a road movie to reflect on Bengaluru’s growing sprawl.
A series of short films by Neelavarana, a Bengaluru-based Ambedkarite production house and artist collective that nurtures artistes from marginalised communities, will be screened too. These include Kuuk Aah? (2024) by MK Abhilash, Babasaheb In Bengaluru (2025) by Mahishaa, Area Boys (2022) by Mahishaa and Case & Bobbin (2025) by Bharath Raj.
If there’s one thing Bhat hopes audiences take away, it is this: “We just want people to know that in cinema, Bangalore has an identity too, but that identity is not a fixed one.”