do you know any indian movies (preferably telugu but anything is fine) that don't objectify women? it's hard to find good ones... thanks!! :D

Of course! My sister actually wrote this response because she has far more movie knowledge than me and is slightly obsessed with analyzing Indian film :)

CN = content note 

Thanks so much for asking! So unfortunately I can’t guarantee that these movies never contain minor instances of objectification, sexism, lack of female agency, or consent issues but for the most part they are free from all of those things and contain three-dimensional female characters. And the romances ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE. I’ll try and point out the points that I remember!
Unfortunately in a lot of these cases, the female characters still are not main driving forces in the movie. Tollywood is slowly catching up with reality.
Let me know if you like these/you’ve seen them already, and I can come up with more! There’s a couple of movies (such as Anukokunda Oka Roju) which I think would fit the bill, but I last watched them so long ago I’m not sure.
Here are some classics (from the 2000’s lol) – a lot of these overlap with my earlier post:
Bommarillu – Haasini is definitely a manic pixie dream-girl, and serves more as a catalyst for Siddhu & his family than anything else, but she is for the most part presented as a developed character with a personality, interests, and quirks of her own that fall out of typical Tollywood heroine realm. Her agency is not as fully developed but she isn’t afraid to make decisions for herself. The other female characters have personalities too, but are sort of presented as pitiable/focused on “superficial” things through the eyes of Siddhu.
CN: Verbal abuse towards Haasini in the second half of the film. He also acts somewhat possessive towards her and reacts to certain situations without figuring out her thoughts. 

Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana – Siri is a well-developed character, but in essence this film is her brother’s story, and so she is constantly depicted relative to that relationship. (With the exception of some parts of the first half). There’s some objectification by the male antagonist. Siri kind of takes a backseat in the second half.
CN: Some minor consent issues in the form of unwanted hugging & teasing at the beginning. Another more major consent issue arises but the movie sort of addresses it (but they don’t really get to the heart of the consent part)

Athadu – This might seem to be a strange choice for this list, but Poori, while not a major presence, is a developed character (although certainly not as well as she should be). She has a personality, she’s not afraid of admitting that she likes Parthu first (or of even kissing him first yeaaaaah). It was nice to see a reversal of the typical boy falls for girl at first sight trope.
CN: Consent/physical force issue re: Parthu grabbing Poori’s hand/breaking her bangles to make her go back to her room (she doesn’t take this lying down though!)

Anand — Despite the title, this film is Rupa’s story through and through, although we approach learning about her through the eyes of Anand. Anand doesn’t serve as her knight in shining armor; it’s only when Rupa is ready for another relationship and realizes that she is in love with Anand does she make that step. Sometimes Anand would act somewhat possessive over Rupa, which was annoying, but she always made it very clear that she was in charge of her actions. Very little in this movie is forced.
CN: Anand remarks about Rupa’s appearance/beauty, but it doesn’t seem objectifying in the scene. He makes an objectifying comment very early on about “How can I get married to a girl without even having seen her legs first?” when his mom is trying to arrange his marriage & there’s a scene where he’s watching some sort of item song music vid on TV. Sexist (& classist) comments. Consent issue with her ex-fiancé, Rahul. 

Godavari – This one’s interesting because Sita’s story morphs into Ram’s as the movie goes on. What I liked a lot is that one of the central points is the goals that Sita has for herself and her career, her confidence, and the value that she places on herself. She doesn’t take other people’s nonsense, but she does value their support.
CN: Sexist comments. A more serious baava-mardalu trope. 

​Some newer ones:

Malli Malli Idi Rani Roju – So first everyone just needs to watch it for the absolutely fantastic, mind-blowing chemistry and acting from Nitya Menen and Sharwanand. And for the story, characterization, music ​and technical aspects of the film. Nazira is a fully-developed character – it doesn’t seem that way, but I think we spend just as much time understanding her character’s thoughts and actions as we do Ram’s (but she doesn’t get as much backstory). She has full agency and makes her own decisions, although of course they are shaped by the influence of others. Plus we see meaningful mom-daughter conversation!!! She certainly has a very unique definition of love and relationships which a lot of people won’t agree with, but from what we can tell, Ram has the same definition. tl;dr WATCH THIS MOVIE!!!!
CN: A sort of consent issue where Ram demands to see Nazira’s face, and in one scene grabs her hand, but he never forces her to show her face or removes her veil for her. He also chases her a lot, and although she admits to her friend that she likes it, he doesn’t know that, so I still think of that as a minor consent issue (since all he sees is her running away from him). 

Ala Modalaindi-– Nitya is a fantastic character, and the second lead Kavya is also developed (although we see her as somewhat shallow). The romance is really interesting and novel to see in Tollywood.
CN: Sexist comments. There’s an item song, but with a plot twist, so I’m counting that as minor objectification. There’s a gag that Gautham (the main lead) is gay, and while it wasn’t as offensive as other gay “humor” in Tollywood, how it played out was disappointing to see. 

Oohalu Gusagusalade – Based on Cyrano de Bergerac. Fresh acting, great chemistry, and although we don’t get to learn that much about Prabha, she has a grounded, interesting personality. It baffles me that Raashi Khanna (the actress who played Prabha) thought that her character was selfish when all she does in the movie is look out for herself and her feelings and try to figure out who she could be happy with amidst a ton of societal pressure. The movie is also fantastic technically.
CN: Sexist comments/assumptions about women from Uday Bhaskar. 

Manam—- While the focus is not on the female characters, they are all well-developed, although I would say the flashback ones more so. I’m not sure how much I can say about their agency though, especially once Nagarjuna’s character decides get excessively involved in one of the pair’s lives. The romance actually has content behind it, which is nice, and Sita & Rama’s love story is particularly touching. Also while it was nice that they showed an early 1900’s family not really caring about caste/class, I think that was super unrealistic, and they could have had a more honest conversation about its implications.
CN: I would say this one has the most consistent objectification out of the list with Naga Chaitanya’s character having a running gag of saying “ladies first” and staring at women’s behinds. Nagarjuna’s character also has some very brief objectification in which he sort of selects who he’s going to marry in a similar vein as how he picks the next car he’s going to buy (to be fair, this whole idea of showing pictures of people and picking who you’d like to marry is somewhat objectifying…) 

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