A handful out of the more than hundred movies Bollywood churns out may not look like much. But when an Anil Ambani’s Adlabs is willing to back a Johnny, or former video house Shemaroo bankrolls a Manorama, it is clear that impoverished state-funded agencies are not the only recourse of these new brand of filmmakers: increasingly, big production houses are putting their money where their mouth has been.

All the films have fiercely indie souls. Their heroes are not the singing-dancing-all-in-one heroes that are long past their sell-by date; their heroines do not change sixty-four costumes in a single song shot among Swiss alps. They use humour, dark or otherwise, not as a tired second track, but as a hugely effective weapon. The films have a strong sense of time and place; Bollywood’s favourite location, La La Land, is a thing of the past.

Above all, they are telling us stories that they want to tell. And we want to see.

The writer is the ‘Indian Express’ film critic