The history of Marathi cinema spells out the names of several well known film personalities. Its history is as old as that of Indian cinema. The first Indian film, Raja Harishchandra, was made by Dadasaheb Phalke, a Marathi man. Since then the Marathi film industry has continuously contributed to the mainstream cinema simultaneously enriching the Marathi movies as well.

In the initial years maestros like V. Shantaram, Master Vinayak, Bhalji Pendharkar, Acharya Atre, Raja Paranjpe, G. D. Madgulkar and Sudhir Phadke contributed to create a rich history of Marathi cinema. In the later years the same task was shouldered by the likes of Anant Mane, Datta Dharmadhikari, Raj Dutt, Dada Kondke and several others. While some of these directors revived the Marathi tamasha style through their movies thus bringing to the world the native culture of Maharashtra, others entertained the audiences with Marathi movies in the comic genre and family dramas.

The 1980s saw the emergence of celebrities like Ashok Saraf and Laxmikant Berde who rose to stardom by tickling the audiences with their comic timing. Both of these actors also contributed to the Hindi film industry. Ashok Saraf also associated himself with television and today he is into filmmaking. Young Marathi directors like Mahesh Kothare and Sachin Pilgaonkar became trend setters with their box-office hit Dhumdhadaka. Mahesh Kothare went onto make several hit comic films and introduced several technical changes. He was the first one in the history of Marathi cinema to introduce Dolby Digital sound. His film, Pachadlela (2004) was the first to be made with digital effects.

The contemporary Marathi cinema is an equal match for the glorious history of Marathi cinema. While Shwaas bagged the Golden Lotus National Award in 2004 the emergence of talented actors like Nana Patekar, Atul Kulkarni, Sonali Kulkari, Ashwini Bhave, Sheryas Talpade, Sunil Barve, Amruta Subhash, Sachin Khedekar, Bharat Jadhav, Sanjay Narvekar and others the Marathi movies has become more and more popular with the masses.