Kamal Haasan: Authenticity Is a Currency That Can Never Be Demonetised

Kamal Haasan stood before the audience at JioHostar’s South Unbound event in Chennai with a sense of purpose, shaping his reflections into a larger meditation on cinema and storytelling. He began by grounding the moment in the shift he sees across the country. “We gather at a moment when India’s media and entertainment is not merely growing, it is transforming,” he said, noting that for the first time, the audience itself is driving the change.

He spoke about how stories no longer belong to any one screen or medium. “Always stories have travelled with travellers to make stories truly screen agnostic,” he said. “They travel with the viewer. The audience has become the platform. And when that happens, the relationship between media and message changes forever.” To him, stories “do not belong to any screen. They always travel with the listener and belong to the people and viewers. Screens simply follow them.”

Kamal saw this shift as a turning point for the South. He called it “a tectonic shift” and said it makes JioHotstar’s initiative “so consequential for Tamil Nadu. Not only for its ambition, but for the architecture of opportunity it unlocks.” In his view, it means “every Tamil creator, producer and storyteller can reach every Indian over every screen, every day.”

He celebrated the rise of regional storytelling. “Today, regional is becoming the new national, and ethnic, the new international,” he said. In his eyes, stories born in “Madurai, Malappuram, Machilipatnam” can no longer be boxed in as regional cinema, because “they are national cultural events.”

To illustrate this shift, he pointed to films that crossed linguistic and geographic borders with ease. “A film rooted in coastal Karnataka’s folklore, like Kantara, can electrify the whole country. A Malayalam mystery like Drishyam, where an ordinary man outwits extraordinary power, crosses borders effortlessly. A Telugu saga like Baahubali or Pushpa becomes everyday vocabulary for Mumbai to say, even Malaysia.” He brought the focus back to Tamil Nadu with examples from his own world. “The relentless manhood of Vikram or the tender courage of Amaran show that what truly travels is not budget, but sincerity.” What these successes reveal, he said, is a simple truth. “Authenticity is a currency that can never be demonetized.”

He reminded the audience that Tamil Nadu has always lived this truth. The state’s culture has long been a fusion of forms, and he described it through its traditional arts. Tamil Nadu, he said, has carried a continuum of “Iyal (literature), Esai (music), Nadagam (drama) and Kothambalams of Cheran (temple theatres) in the Chera kingdom, where literature, music, theatre merged into a single cultural object.” Even if modern creators use new tools, “the instinct remains the same, to be rooted and to be told in telling your story.”

He connected this Indian shift to a global example. “Korean series in a regional dialect spoken by 80 million people like Squid Game, reached billions around the world,” he said. By comparison, he noted that some Indian languages speak to “more than 275 million people,” making the potential “exponentially larger.”

For Kamal, talent alone is not enough. “Creative economies flourish only when their ecosystems grow together,” he said, naming the alignment needed across “creators, technicians, platforms and policy makers.” He credited the leadership behind the South Unbound initiative. “JioHotstar has given South Unbound its clarity of purpose, treating the South not as a market, but as a creative centre of gravity.” He also acknowledged the work of “the JioHotstar leadership.” who grounded the larger vision “in a black hole strategy that expands genuine opportunity for regional creators.”

He then spoke about the support from the Tamil Nadu government. Deputy CM Udayanidhi Stalin, he said, “guided by the vision of our Chief Minister, has championed talent development, training and long-term creative infrastructure.” The Letter of Intent signed between the government and JioHotstar is, in his words, “not a slogan, but a 12,000 crore commitment to Southern Storytelling, with over 4,000 crore earmarked for Tamil Nadu alone over the next five years.” He added a personal appeal: “I humbly urge Jio to partner in pioneering media studies programmes across colleges all over India.”

He emphasised the importance of “structured training in writing, cinematography, sound, editing, animation and VFX,” because this will create “not just content, but careers.” He believes young people deserve “pathways that match their talents” and sees upgrading skills every five years as essential. “Skill development in action, truly,” he said.

Kamal then turned to the larger question. “Where does India’s media and entertainment sector stand today?” He answered it piece by piece: “A young audience with limitless support, a digital universe expanding at a historic pace, a regional force shaping national taste, a state like Tamil Nadu committed to leading and nurturing talent pipelines, a global market looking to India for the next wave of ideas.” With conviction, he said, “There has never been a better time to be a storyteller. And if we do not seize the day, we may never see one like this very soon. Maybe none at all.”

He urged everyone to think boldly. “Let us commit boldly to taking the Indian media and entertainment sector towards a 100 billion future,” he said, believing this will strengthen Tamil Nadu’s path “towards becoming a 1 trillion economy.” He shared his personal connection to this ambition by saying, “I have dreamt of it, and now it is the time we enact it.”

Finally, he addressed the creators in the room. “The barriers are gone. The tools are in your hands. Permission is irrelevant. Courage is the differentiator.” His call was clear. “Let Tamil Nadu lead with creative courage, bringing together language, sound, performance and stories that stand tall on the world stage.” He imagined an industry where “collaboration replaces fear. Experimentation replaces formula. And imagination replaces limitation.”

He ended with a reminder of the moment they all stood in. “The world is watching. The platform is ready. The audience is waiting. Let us create boldly, honestly, fearlessly for Tamil Nadu, for India and for the world.”