Rajkumar Hirani’s ‘PK’ (2014) was also exceptionally intelligent for Bollywood entertainment. In the entertainment category, the Malayalam film ‘Drishyam’ (2015) with Mohanlal, may have been the most exciting. Both work against Indian film convention, ‘Thithi’ by portraying a rural community not as peaceful but as highly corrupt and trying to get by any which way, while ‘Court’ deals with the judicial process not as high drama but as inefficient, callous and arbitrary. Both use non-actors or amateurs in key roles and bring authenticity to Indian cinema that is rare. The best Indian films of the decade are evidently Chaitanya Thamhane’s Marathi film ‘Court’ (2014) and Raam Reddy’s Kannada film ‘Thithi’ (2016).
OTT offers young filmmakers an opportunity to be original and experimental, something that cinema rarely does. Television is included since Netflix and Amazon Prime are offering shows of a quality that often exceeds cinema and one sees OTT going from strength to strength, since it bypasses public exhibition in theatres, a stumbling block for filmmakers. The following is a list of film and television productions that are good enough to rank with the best in the categories of Indian and Kannada cinema, Hollywood, world cinema, and India-specific and world OTT television. One reason could be the political climate and the worldwide check on what may be said or shown, often in the name of ‘political correctness’. There has been a decline in the quality of cinema and very few contemporary films, including those shown at international film festivals, deserve a place in film history, even if one searches the entire decade for them. The ‘best’ in any year with regard to film does not imply noteworthy work any longer, even at the global level.