Middle Cinema

Bollywood term for movies aimed at middle-class professionals.

Writing for IndianExpress.com, Debesh Bannerjee named director Madhur Bhandarkar as a pioneer of middle cinema movies:

There’s a lot of hype about Fashion, about how it exposes the dark side of the glamour industry but Bhandarkar rubbishes the trivia. ‘It views the fashion world from the perspective of the middle-class man who comes home after a nine-to-five job and turns on the TV set to see models walking on the ramp. His idea of the fashion industry ends there. ‘I take that audience behind the ramp into the professional and personal lives of the models and designers,’ he explains. Bhandarkar’s style of cinema has coined a new phrase in Bollywood, ‘middle cinema.’

(This style of cinema is also associated with director and writer Shyam Benegal.)