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

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, a Telugu saga like Baahubali or Pushpa becomes everyday vocabulary for Mumbai to Malaysia, says Kamal Haasan

xKamal 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