During his visit to Kolkata last year, ace filmmaker Anurag Kashyap observed how Bengali films had become so “ghatiya” (shoddy). “Bangla cinema’s standard was at Mount Everest. It has fallen from that height, whereas Hindi cinema has fallen from the second floor. So, the downfall of Bangla cinema is far more significant,” he said to widespread outrage. Tollywood actors, directors, writers, musicians and fans alike castigated Kashyap, asking him to direct a hit or two himself.
When Kashyap said that the pressure from producers has turned directors into “hawkers” trying to sell their movies, he opened a pandora’s box that forced many Bengalis to confront the truth about their film industry: that it was no longer in the pink of health that it had been seven decades ago, when Nimai Ghosh’s Chhinnamul (1950) and Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955) placed neo-realism at the forefront of cinema, much before the rest of India had caught up. The rise of this genre was in contrast with the popular Bangla melodramas of the time. Ray, along with the likes of Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen and Tapan Sinha, became the representatives of this new genre of realist films.
The decline of Tollywood is mostly attributed to the 2000s, when, with the corporatisation of the industry and multiplexes replacing single screens, Bengali art-house cinema started gaining traction, with the bhadralok, or city-based audience, replacing the less sophisticated “underclass” of viewers, or the urban poor. Single screens started closing down on a large scale, and the few that remained were dominated by Bollywood films, while dubbed South Indian films on TV further pulled viewers away from commercial Bengali cinema.
Consequently, even Tollywood’s biggest stars like Prosenjit Chatterjee and Dev, propelled to superstardom by commercial cinema, gradually gravitated to art-house and middle-of-the-road films. These movies, often set within Kolkata, typically unfolded in a single location, usually a house or a small neighbourhood, and loosely came to be known as “one-room dramas”. They failed to resonate with the masses, resulting in Tollywood’s shrinking business.
The pandemic and emergence of OTT further worsened the crisis. Director Pradipta Bhattacharyya, known for the national award-winning Bangla film Bakita Byaktigato (2013), additionally attributed the downfall of Tollywood to shrinking budgets, non-Bengali producers and the drainage of the hallowed “cultural capital” of Bengalis. However, the massive success of Hindi and South Indian films in West Bengal in the last two years showed Tollywood’s stakeholders that the market for commercial films with original content was still intact in the state.
This was confirmed by two recent blockbusters—Bohurupi, co-directed by Nandita Roy and Shiboprosad Mukherjee, and Khadaan, directed by Shoojit Dutta and starring Dev. They injected fresh energy and money into Bengali cinema. Released last October, Bohurupi, meaning “one with many faces”, is a loosely-biographical heist thriller featuring a vigilante dacoit, played by Mukherjee himself. The dacoit whose heists inspired the film had himself approached the filmmakers. “This man came to our office and narrated how he had looted 27 banks in five years,” said Roy. It took them 13 years to make the film because they did not have the budget. “To do it justice, the film had to be made on a grand scale,” she said.
Khadaan, on the other hand, which hit the screens last December, is an action-packed tale of an illegal Bangladeshi immigrant working in a coal mine (essayed by Dev) and his friendship with a Bangladeshi refugee (Jisshu Sengupta). For Dutta, Khadaan’s story is one he grew up with. But producers—used to the prevalent one-room dramas of the time—were not willing to come on board. Dutta credits Dev for making the film possible. “He really understood what I was trying to do and ensured that I got all the resources that I needed,” said the filmmaker.
Both films, set outside Kolkata and featuring ambitious lower-caste protagonists, struck a chord with audiences. Bohurupi’s box office collection has surpassed ₹18 crore and Khadaan’s, has over ₹20 crore, excluding streaming and broadcast rights. Other than a national release, they have also been released in Bangladesh, the US, Europe, Australia, Thailand and the Middle East.
“With these two films, Tollywood has reimagined its audience through single screens after viewing them through multiplexes for some time. But people also watched these films in multiplexes,” Professor Madhuja Mukherjee of Jadavpur University’s Department of Film Studies told THE WEEK. “So it’s not just about the protagonists being lower-caste or coming from rural working-class backgrounds. Common people’s aspirations have changed, and these films reflected that which is why even audiences in Kolkata embraced them.”
Both Roy and Dutta give credit to blockbusters like Pathaan, Jawan and the Pushpa and KGF franchises for helping them understand the pulse of the audience. “This is similar to crop rotation—like how one crop can help in [improving] the soil’s fertility and make it better for the cultivation of upcoming crops,” said Dutta, a newcomer in Tollywood. “Films like Pushpa and KGF did huge business in West Bengal, and our industry, too, is now benefiting from them.”
For Roy, renowned for her successful collaboration with Shiboprosad Mukherjee in directing one-room dramas (earning them the moniker ‘Shibu-Nandita’), budget constraints were always a primary concern. “We can also make a Pushpa or Pathaan. But where’s the budget? Shooting within a house or neighbourhood was always cost-effective. The moment we plan a shoot outside the city, costs skyrocket,” she said.
Dutta, who grew up in the hinterlands of Birbhum, Purulia and Bankura districts, sees a deeper cultural bias at play. He believes Kolkata’s filmmakers ignored Bengal beyond the city. “Fresh ideas were lacking in commercial cinema because outsiders weren’t given opportunities. Even today, people with regional Bengali accents are mocked in Tollywood,” he said. “The intellectuals, who often don’t take into consideration that people outside Kolkata also study Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray, believe that those who watch commercial cinema are mediocre. But who defines mediocrity and what does it even mean?”
So, have Bohurupi and Khadaan given Tollywood a formula for commercial success? Both directors disagree. Roy believes that there cannot be any single formula for a hit film. However, Dutta says that the two films have revealed the rise of a new kind of audience in West Bengal, one that mirrors the viewers of Tamil and Malayalam cinema. “Many of their mainstream films blend entertainment with strong social messages,” he said. “Audiences whistle, dance, and still take home something meaningful. There should not be any shame attached to watching commercial films.”
