Will we ever see politically-charged dialogues in Telugu movies? Will our filmmakers take up political dramas of the Sekhar Kammula's Leader variety in today's atmosphere? These are important questions to ask.
The Telugu film industry's stalwarts have always had political biases. They are entitled to those biases. But their pro-TDP proclivities never stopped them from raising hard questions through movies. Dialogues in many movies used to raise issues in the 1990s and 2000s. Venkatesh acted in a film like Ganesh because the environment was not intolerant.
In the last many years, this has stopped completely. Without getting into details, it would suffice to say that the intimidation intensified around the time the YSRCP came to power in 2019. The current regime in Telangana, by harassing Allu Arjun and threatening to target the entire industry in some way, has only made it worse.
In this scenario, if someone wants to satirically or angrily question, say, the deaths of students in residential and welfare hostels, they would be scared of being dubbed immoral, vulgar and anti-Telangana. If someone wants to raise questions against the freebie culture in the AP and Telangana, they would be scared of a ban.
Have you come across any major Telugu film that has questioned the AP capital politics? Have you come across a single political dialogue against the free bus rides scheme in Telangana that privileges middle-class women over poor men? If these questions can't be asked by filmmakers and films, it is a loss. Our youths have been starved of knowledge by intolerant regimes. They want filmmakers to behave like propagandist TV channels they fund. Some filmmakers must be brimming with ideas, but no production house dares to make political films these days.
