Imagine you are home alone on a rainy Friday night. The lights are dim, dinner is on the way and you are scrolling. A video begins, “Imagine if...”

That’s how Mumbai-based content creator Andre Borges begins his Instagram reels where he gives recommendations mostly for horror and thriller movies. “The idea was to build a community of people who couldn’t find a movie to watch while eating alone or with their partners,” says Borges. “I’m not here to shit on people. It takes a lot of work to make even bad movies.”

His page is part of a rapidly expanding corner of the internet where cinema is not simply reviewed—there it’s decoded, dissected, memeified, celebrated and debated. Instagram reels zoom in on the colour of a frame. YouTube essays unpack symbolism. Reddit threads argue about endings. Carousels create entirely new ships (fans rooting for a romantic pairing).

Film appreciation has escaped niche cinephile circles—and into the commons of social media. And the audience is following.

OPEN ACCESS

Bengaluru-based risk consultant Aparna Balaji consumes cinema content copiously—from scene breakdowns, trivia and explainers to character analyses, nostalgia reels and reviews.

Along with Borges’ account, she follows @cinema. peasuvom for Tamil cinema, Sudhir Srinivasan for critique and conversations, and women creators like Anjali Pillai’s @thefourthwall. in, Shreevanti Puranik and Madhu of @wtfmadhu.

Social media, says Balaji, has made films, especially indie and critically acclaimed ones, far more accessible. Creators have helped her appreciate the history behind a film, its making and the regional or cultural references.

Mumbai-based ad writer Shamita Roy is partial towards recommendations, explainers and reviews. She follows Boman Irani and his screenwriting platform Spiral Bound, Harshit Bansal’s @humansofcinema and writers like Satyanshu Singh and Aditya Kripalani.

“It has widened my tastes and understanding of stories and how they are told,” she says.

Roy has revisited the works of Govind Nihalani, Shyam Benegal, Vijaya Mehta, Billy Wilder and Sidney Lumet, besides discovering gems like Sabar Bonda.

Balaji, too, says creators influence what she watches. She has gone on to watch the movies of Balu Mahendra, K Balachander, Singeetham Srinivasa Rao, Shankar Nag, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, G Aravindan and Shaji N Karun.

“Their films are layered. I couldn’t fully appreciate them when I was younger. But when creators analyse them now, I’m more inclined to revisit them.”

One cinephile shared that they find creator-led cinema content more personal and curated.

Delhi-based fashion entrepreneur Deepika Arora says she recently rewatched Dil Se… only for its cinematography, thanks to a reel she’d watched. She follows @mangoelane for film essays and @characterbiopsies for character analyses.

Creators connect mainstream audiences to overlooked cinema.

“It means that film is alive and well and still the primary cultural force,” says Anupama Chopra, editor, The Hollywood Reporter India.

She welcomes the explosion of explainers and deep dives, but she’s careful not to romanticise it.

“I don’t know if we can draw a direct correlation and say we have much greater cinema literacy,” she says. “But I do think we have wider tastes. Audiences are willing to watch films in languages not their own, movies without stars and stories that are challenging.”

ENTER THE CREATOR

Many creators never intended to do this.

Like Bengaluru-based Abhishek Mishra (@doosre_shabdon_main on Instagram and In Other Words on YouTube), who arrived at cinema through music as he started with analysing songs in 2022.

For the longest time no one was watching and then his reel on “Kun Faya Kun” from Rockstar went viral. People joined and never left. A former product manager at Samsung, he says the transition from songs to films was a natural progression.

“I need to press pause on a movie as I have to watch it frame-by-frame. And that’s possible only because of OTT,” he says. This is, he says, fuelling deep dives in cinema.

The bio of Mumbai-based creator Pulkit Kochar says: “Bollywood hi meri dulhan hai.” He started with comedic reels to make Bollywood content and says people have started noticing way more things.

“A reason why a term like ‘peak detailing’ has become commonplace now.” He noticed it first in 2022 when the Brahmastra song “Kesariya” came out and people took to the internet over the word “love storiyaan” in it.

The gatekeeping nature of film content is over, says Mishra.

“Earlier, this kind of discussion was very elite, very intellectual and largely in English,” he says. Social media has demolished that.

For New York-based Sucharita Tyagi, one of the earliest digital film critics, the explosion isn’t surprising—it was inevitable. “When I started at Film Companion in 2015, YouTube was very different,” she says.

“Smartphones, cameras, microphones, high-speed internet and even something as simple as the ring light during the pandemic dramatically expanded the space. Suddenly, many more people could create good-quality video content.”

And cinema is one thing everyone has an opinion on.

WATCH & LEARN

The creators are not only getting audiences through the door but also changing what they notice once the lights go down.

Mishra asks: “Why did that scene make me cry?” , “What did that colour mean?”

On Kochar’s feed you’ll find videos of Amit Trivedi composing for an older era or every cameo in the song “Deewangi Deewangi”.

Chennai-based film editor and creator Madhu uses her film school training to create women-first content. Her videos are weekly film essays on female characters, costume designs and mise-en-scène.

Through the “Mothers of Media” series she spotlighted the female pioneers in Indian cinema.

“My content has the vibe of a slumber party for girls. The cinephile space is very male-dominated. We need more women representation, never mind that we are not on the screen,” she says.

Around 70% of her followers are women. She hopes to widen the conversation around who gets to make, analyse and inherit cinema.

She says, “People used to have these conversations when they left the theatre. Now they’ve adapted to Instagram. Strangers are talking to each other in the comments section.”

COMMENTS. COMMUNITY.

Pune-based creator Parth Kelkar (@toomanytats) says viewers are looking for dialogue.

“Content might be spoon-fed, but it still needs to be chewed. People want food for thought. They want to discuss it beyond the feed. That’s why comments are important as people crave connection,” says the 25-year-old.

And what better way to bond than over cinema?

Instead of the viewer sitting alone in the dark, community is the new audience.

Tyagi is focused on building her offline movie club and memberships.

Bansal’s @humansofcinema does offline film appreciation workshops and has launched a ₹40 lakh film co-production fund with US-based Safarnaama Pictures for Indian filmmakers.

Sanket Patil, whose sharp dissections of popular films have found a devoted audience, says, “People possess an evolved perspective to revisit films. They also possess the language to pinpoint exactly what ailed those movies.”

Kochar, too, mines cinema’s back catalogue.

“Currently, cinema is underwhelming. When people have nothing to look forward to, they look back. It’s about adding a new lens to something they already love.”

That “new lens” is becoming valuable.

When Bansal launched @humansofcinema in 2018, he wanted to celebrate cinema’s emotional impact.

“People want to analyse films, understand them and engage with them deeply.”

He realised this when his video on Badlapur’s opening shot went viral.

“Audiences are interested in the craft of cinema if you present it in an engaging way.”

Even recommendations have evolved.

For Bengaluru-based creator Puranik, genres no longer persuade people, emotions do. Her recommendations are along the lines of: “If you loved XYZ, this will give you the same feeling.”

“Creators are the new cultural curators. Every creator develops a distinct identity through the stories they recommend,” she says.

“People don’t consume books, films, series and pop culture in isolation anymore. Creators play an important role in bringing attention to niche and underappreciated cinema.”

Tyagi says, “Social media has definitely become a gateway to discovering films. Otherwise, how would smaller films without huge marketing budgets reach audiences?”

Anmol Jamwal of the YouTube channel Tried & Refused Productions says creators can create sleeper hits—like 12th Fail and, recently, Main Vaapas Aaunga, which picked up thanks to social media content.

PICTURE ABHI BAAKI HAI

Cinema creators have not just made film conversations richer, they have also complicated them. The platforms are susceptible to algorithms, sponsored content and outrage.

Jamwal says when he started in 2016, there were few independent voices. Today, everyone has one. “There was a gatekeeping character to film criticism,” he says. “Now the floodgates have opened.”

With the surge in voices comes noise.

Tyagi says, “There’s an overwhelming amount of clutter. It becomes difficult for thoughtful work to be seen or discovered.”

Jamwal says audiences have also grown wary of paid reviews.

“Production companies are more concerned about controlling what is being said about their movie than focusing on making a good movie,” he says.

Short-form content has also created an expectation for instant verdicts. “People want you to get to the point. But cinema isn’t that simple.”

Chopra believes the explosion of voices is ultimately healthy.

“Professional critics have to work harder and do better. I hope filmmakers and storytellers also notice that there is an audience out there watching closely.”

But she also warns that social media isn’t built for nuance. “There is way too much judgement attached to your opinion on a film.”

For Patil, the biggest reward isn’t virality but finding people who think like he does.

Bansal has seen that relationship go even further.

“One of the most rewarding things is hearing people tell us they became interested in cinema or even became filmmakers after following the page.”

He believes the next generation of cinema creators won’t stop at explainers. “Creators will move into filmmaking itself like in the West.”

Jamwal believes that to build a career in cinema content one has to look at long-format videos rather than reels.

More importantly, “The future belongs to those who disrupt, not assimilate. I see too many creators who are happy getting a supporting role in a film. The need of the hour is younger faces not just in front of the camera but behind it.”

A phone lights up. A creator begins, “Imagine if…”

Thirty seconds later, you are adding a Malayalam indie to your watchlist, hunting for a 1957 courtroom drama, or wondering why yellow is used in Thappad.

Roger Ebert famously said: “It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.”

Turns out, the internet wants to know how.