From the left: Fandry, Karan Arjunand Sairatall available to stream on Zee5.
Photo Illustration: Vulture; Photos by Film Karavan, Digital Entertainment and Zee5
Dance battles against colonialism and sincere musical friendships between two ass-kicks may not be familiar to American audiences, but these days, that brand of Indian cinema is just a click away. For many Western viewers, this is the latest Telugu-language blockbuster RRR was a first foray into films from the subcontinent. Curiosity about international programming is at an all-time high, and while major streamers like Netflix offer a smattering of Indian content, the best place to keep up might be unknown to most American viewers: Zee5, which launched in India in 2018 and it finally made it way to the US in June.
Targeting primarily South Asia and the South Asian diaspora, the platform has 18 major language options as its key selling point, even ranking above genre categories on the desktop landing page. After all, ‘Indian cinema’ as a genre term is so broad that it’s practically useless given the nation’s wealth of diverse film industries, which tend to be linguistically divided. India releases nearly 2,000 films a year, of which only about 20 percent are Bollywood (or Hindi studio) productions. What’s more, Zee5 — still a relatively new streamer globally that has yet to fully overcome its crashes and technological glitches — also streams syndicated TV shows, original series, live news, short films, trailers, music clips, and even recipe cooking videos for Indian dishes, and the variety of options seems almost impenetrable. However, Zee5 disagrees: “Today’s American audience no longer sees language as a barrier,” said Archana Anand, Zee5’s global chief business officer. “In fact, they are curious to explore content from other cultures and languages as it opens up a new world for them.” Given the many Indian streaming recommendations recently released in American outlets and Zee5’s growth to 101, 9 million monthly active users worldwide by 2022, they seem right — and the service is connected to South Asian film and television in a way its competitors aren’t.
There is no one right way to watch Indian films and any list of must-see classics is probably split between half a dozen different websites with their own ways of categorizing. On Hulu, you need to find the Hotstar hub. On Netflix, they’re scattered under “International” or require entering a specific URL. While Indian films are just a spoke in the wheel for most platforms, they’re Zee5’s bread and butter, and browsing its options takes you through the spectrums of style and language.
That said: Some scrolling might be necessary. It’s not personally curated like MUBI or the Criterion Channel, which show a handful of Indian classics and contemporary art-house films in the country’s socially conscious “parallel” tradition. Zee5’s suggestions are more mainstream and algorithmic, and the categories often seem to be generated and ordered by artificial intelligence: wedding films, war films, Tamil classics, 90’s Hindi hits, or films starring Bollywood king Shah Rukh Khan or Malayalam superstar Tovino Thomas. I counted 84 of these combinations in one session, but new ones popped up on every new device I logged into. Category roulette isn’t a bad way to relive the days of cable TV, where you could stumble upon hidden gems by accident, such as: Lathe Joshi or Pride Month Bollywood selections Aligarh. The biggest advantage of Zee5’s Netflix-like recommendation system, however, is that it not only shows what’s most popular in the US right now, but in India – and also in different languages - it gives a direct look at the country’s contemporary zeitgeist.
In that sense, it might not have a huge list of Indian classics — it has about as many as Netflix, that is, few — but it does have the first film I remember seeing as a kid in Saudi Arabia, the star-studded Bollywood reincarnation revenge drama Karan Arjun, in case you want to start your journey from the same place as me. Of course, you could just as easily click on categories like Timeless Telugu Classics or All Time Favorite Malayalam Films and head out to the races.
The homepage, in action, with links to some of Zee5’s language centers.
Photo: Zee5
In terms of more contemporary fare, Zee5 is fast becoming a premier hub for new releases directed by acclaimed Indian filmmakers. RRRwhich is available dubbed in Hindi on Netflix can be found on Zee5 in its original language (in addition to dubbings in several others) while a new hit such as the Bollywood sports drama Jhund, directed by Nagraj Manjule, found its way onto the platform just a few weeks after its theatrical release. Zee5’s selection of recent films offers great after great of Manjule’s fiery Marathi-language indies Fandry and Sairatto Atanu Ghosh’s moving Bengali Alzheimer’s drama Mayurakshito Geetu Mohandas’ heartbreaking queer gangster saga Moonton or The older, which is partly in the Jeseri dialect of Malayalam and partly in the Indo-Pakistani Sign Language. Zee5 is also the first platform to offer an Indian film with on-screen sign language interpretation (albeit for the highly controversial ones The Kashmir Files).
A quick scroll through the Language tab reveals everything from Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada (languages associated with major South Indian blockbusters) to Bhojpuri and Odia, which have featured in the broader conversation about Indian cinema are often ignored. Some of these hubs even go beyond the borders of India. Its Urdu options offer plenty of Pakistani dramas, its Bangla (or Bengali) hub offers Bangladeshi shows, and it even has numerous Indian films dubbed into Arabic given the platform’s expansion into the Middle East. There are also a small handful of films that have been dubbed into English because of the subtitle averse, but unfortunately few of these are worth recommending, except HaiderVishal Bhardwaj’s Hindi adaptation of Shakespeares hamletWhere the language of Ouroboros becomes a farce anyway.
Unfortunately, the platform’s linguistic back and forth can also slightly disadvantage non-South Asians. Rather than presenting Zee5 with a movie with the option to toggle between numerous language options, each dub appears as its own separate entry, requiring you to use Google to find out which version is the original. In some cases, like the Rajinikanth sci-fi action bonanza Enthiranor robotonly the Hindi dub is available (the Tamil original is not currently streaming anywhere in the US).
Depending on how you use it, Zee5’s platform isn’t the most user-friendly either. The site, while crowded with categories, freezes or crashes quite often. While the recently updated Apple TV app works smoothly, It’s difficult to find the list of language categories – the platform’s raison d’être – forcing users to go into their settings menu and manually choose which languages they want or don’t want to show. Meanwhile, in the Fire TV app, where language selection is easier, you can’t navigate to a video tab for shorter material like recipes or music videos like the Apple TV does. So you’ll likely need a combination of devices to get the full experience if you don’t already know exactly what title you’re looking for. Currently, the iOS app seems to be the most complete and reliable of those we’ve tested. (Zee5 is also available on Roku, Android, and Google Play.)
And yet, given its price, Zee5 is probably worth the time. While it doesn’t offer free trials or a monthly subscription, its $20.99 quarterly plan — just under $7 a month — is cheaper than most major streamers, and the $49.99 annual cost is even cheaper and totals down to about $4.16 monthly. According to Zee5 representatives, the platform offers 200,000 hours of content. So if more Indian cinema is on your shopping list, the economics will pay for themselves in the end – as long as you allow time to google it.