Fanatics OTT release date: When and where to watch documentary about fandom in south Indian cinema
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“He owns you… he believes he owns you … and you belong to him,” says Kannada superstar Kiccha Sudeep in a new documentary that attempts to decode fanaticism in south Indian cinema. He is joined by his peers Allu Arjun from Telugu cinema and Vijay Sethupathi from Tamil films, as well as industry observers and mental health experts as they make sense of obsessive fan culture.
Fanatics headed to DocuBay on...
Directed by Aryan D Roy and produced by Arpita Chatterjee, the documentary Fanatics is a DocuBay original and will be available to stream on the platform from December 7. DocuBay is an OTTplay Premium offering as well. A trailer of Fanatics was released recently, which looks at the fan culture from the perspective of stars and those studying the behaviour of fans.
The trailer opens with stock footage of Telugu superstar Mahesh Babu declaring that his fans are his everything, which then cuts to Allu Arjun talking about stars being idolized in the south, visuals of fans doing milk abhisheka for the cut outs of their idols, etc. The craze goes to the extent of treating them as gods, which Sudeep says is a tad scary, especially when temples are made with the actors as objects of worship.
An expert explains that it is people with body image disorders, low sense of self-esteem, who are most vulnerable to get into the absorption-addiction model. The documentary also looks at the dangers of this crazed behaviour, with an obsession for one actor often resulting in hatred for another or all others. The death of a Pawan Kalyan fan at the hands of a Jr NTR fan is cited as an example of the perils of obsessive star worship.
The official synopsis of Fanatics states, “Fanatics delves into the intense devotion of South Indian cinema fans, highlighting their struggles with extreme loyalty, self-harm, and emotional turmoil. In a world where actors are revered like deities, this documentary explores how such devotion sometimes escalates into rivalries among fan groups, leading to real-life tragedies.”
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