Netflix to release a star-studded doc series on the history of romance in Bollywood
As romantics around the world gear up to celebrate Valentine’s Day, the creator of “Indian Matchmaking” is preparing to release a love letter to Bollywood.
As romantics around the world gear up to celebrate Valentine’s Day, the creator of “Indian Matchmaking” is preparing to release a love letter to Bollywood.
A new documentary series coming to Netflix on Feb. 14 will explore the history of Bollywood romance movies and their impact on Indian identity, with interviews from 35 Hindi film icons of the last 50 years. “The Romantics” picks the brains of Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Kajol, Madhuri Dixit and Ranbir Kapoor (among many, many others), who all sit down to discuss Hindi cinema and the roles they’ve played in shaping it.
Colorful settings, love songs and beautiful dance numbers have come to define Hindi cinema globally, the actors said, and they’ve molded how the world sees Indian culture.
“Films that come out of India are completely unique to our culture,” actor Abhishek Bachchan said in the series’ trailer. “They don’t try to be like anybody else.”
The opening question posed to the actors in the trailer — “What do you think about the term ‘Bollywood’?” — is already a deep cut. It’s a label fraught with conversations about exclusivity, colorism, nepotism and South Indian erasure in a Hindi-only medium.
Rating: 5