Bhubaneswar: The critically-acclaimed Odia film ‘Khyanikaa – The Lost Idea’ has been taken down from Amazon Prime Video in just two days after its release.
The film was released on Amazon Prime in Indian and Global territories on June 6 much to the joy of Odisha cine lovers. Two days later on June 8, an Amazon official directed the distributor to take this film down immediately.
In an email interaction with Odisha Bytes, producer Swastik Choudhury said, “We have been trying to resolve this issue with Amazon Prime Video for the past one week, however, they have come back saying – they currently offer content in 9 local languages only and Odia is not one of them.”
He further said that their distributor, who is an authorized Amazon partner, denied of any such criteria mentioned in the publishing guidelines they received from Amazon Prime Video. And they confirmed, “Though your title meets the guidelines there was no reason said for the removal of your title officially even after publishing. We were warned not to publish Odia titles in Amazon Prime Video.”
Swastik said that there is no available information from Amazon Prime Video mentioning there is any language restriction with respect to Odia language films. “Moreover, if such a guideline exists then it is all the more discriminatory towards Odia – which is one of the 6 classical languages of India,” he said.
When several film lovers reached Amazon Customer Care regarding the unavailability of this film, the customer care gave them reasons like – ‘Producer has pulled down the film’, ‘The license has expired’, ‘The film was never released in India’, all of which are extremely misleading causing a lot of damage in terms of goodwill and repute to the makers and to Odisha cinema at large, he said, adding that it confirmed that they are open to Odia films as well.
This is the only Odia film, which was released on Amazon Prime. Notably, the film is available on Amazon Prime in other territories.
‘Khyanikaa – The Lost Idea’ was the only Odia film at IFFI Goa and has represented Odisha and India at festivals across 14 countries. It also won the Odisha State Film Awards conferred by the Odisha government two years back. It has an IMDB rating of 9.4 currently.
