The year angry men dominated Bollywood

For the Indian movie trade, 2025 felt like a return to acquainted floor.

The yr earlier than that, women-led tales had briefly reshaped India’s world cinematic picture, bringing accolades and new consideration. However final yr, Bollywood’s violent, male-driven motion thrillers dominated the home box-office and cultural conversations.

Within the final weeks of 2025, Indian social media was swamped with discussions a couple of single juggernaut: Dhurandhar, an espionage thriller set within the backdrop of India-Pakistan tensions.

Filled with graphic violence and gangland politics, the movie turned the defining hit of the yr, cementing its place in a crop of aggressive, hypermasculine movies that drove fashionable discourse.

The development was a stark distinction to 2024, when various movies made by ladies – Payal Kapadia’s All We Think about As Gentle, Shuchi Talati’s Ladies Will Be Ladies and Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Girls – obtained world consideration and reward.

“What 2024 established was that Indian ladies filmmakers should not marginal voices, however main world ones,” says movie critic Mayank Shekhar, calling it “a second of reality” fairly than a development.

The hope was that richer, extra textured tales about ladies would develop each in quantity and recognition. As an alternative, in 2025 the highest 10 box-office hits – 5 of them from Bollywood, a small aid for a Hindi movie trade nonetheless struggling to regain its footing after the pandemic – have been dominated by larger-than-life, hypermasculine heroes, from the historic epic Chhaava to the motion spectacle Struggle 2. The one movie on the record led by a lady was an outlier: the Malayalam-language superhero movie Lokah.

It wasn’t simply motion thrillers that put males on the centre. Blockbuster romance Saiyaara adopted a troubled male rockstar who finally “rescues” his companion who’s combating Alzheimer’s illness. Even legendary spectacles resembling Kantara: Chapter 1 (Kannada) and Mahavatar Narsimha (dubbed into a number of languages) doubled down on conventional male heroism.

The yr’s most talked-about movies have been dominated by photographs of males performing ache, energy and vengeance at full quantity.

Out of the highest 10, one of many yr’s most debated hits was Tere Ishk Mein, which options an indignant, risky male protagonist and a high-achieving lady whose ambitions are eclipsed by his obsessive love. Regardless of criticism for romanticising poisonous masculinity, the movie turned actor Dhanush’s highest-grossing Hindi launch, incomes greater than 1,550m rupees ($17.26m, £12.77m) worldwide.

One other shock hit was Ek Deewane Ki Deewaniyat, a comparatively small-budget romance drama with a hero who, as a review put it, is “an obsessive lover who refuses to take no for a solution”.

2024 supplied “a glimpse of what is attainable”, says Priyanka Basu, a senior lecturer in Performing Arts at King’s Faculty London.

She factors out that Hindi cinema has traditionally marginalised ladies protagonists, including that the male-centred trade has lengthy had stark inequalities in casting, pay and alternatives.

“Only one yr to alter that’s unrealistic. We’d like extra such years, and extra tales that put ladies entrance and centre,” she says.

Indian cinema’s, and particularly Bollywood’s, fixation with the macho hero goes again to Amitabh Bachchan’s “indignant younger man” picture of the Seventies.

Even the romantic period of superstars like Shah Rukh Khan supplied solely a quick detour – one he has since deserted in favour of action-heavy blockbusters resembling Pathaan and Jawan.

The development has carried onto streaming platforms as effectively – as soon as seen as various areas the place women-centric storytelling may succeed.

A current report by media analysis firm Ormax analysing 338 Hindi reveals on streaming platforms confirmed that motion and crime thrillers, principally male-led, now make up 43% of the titles; female-led tales have fallen from 31% in 2022 to only 12% in 2025.

“Sooner or later, OTT (over-the-top, or streaming) platforms started chasing box-office logic,” Mr Shekhar says. “Streaming now mirrors theatrical traits as an alternative of difficult them.”

Commerce specialists argue that the shift displays viewers demand fairly than artistic regression within the trade.

“Indian movies have traditonally been male-led however we have now additionally had female-centric classics like Mom India and Pakeezah,” says analyst Taran Adarsh.

The accusations of toxicity, he says, come from a “handful of critics” and might’t change the destiny of movies.

“On the finish of the day, the one verdict that issues is that of the viewers,” he provides.

However attributing the whole lot to viewers tastes is an oversimplification, argues Anu Singh Choudhary, co-writer of Delhi Crime 3, the third season of a Netflix thriller that highlighted the difficulty of women-trafficking via a feminist lens.

“Macho blockbusters have existed for lengthy as a result of they replicate a society that is at all times been patriarchal and male-dominated. Will that change in a single day? No. However because the world order adjustments, so will our movies,” she says.

There’s additionally the financial actuality. Producers, distributors and exhibitors management the variety of screens, advertising and visibility any movie will get – and that always depends upon the bankability of the male star. Impartial and women-led movies face an uphill battle, significantly if they aren’t fronted by large stars.

Movies these days are additionally going via a “interval of performative, exaggerated misogyny”, says screenwriter Atika Chohan, whose work consists of women-led movies Chhapaak and Margarita With a Straw.

A few of this, she thinks, is a response to the accountability demanded by ladies through the MeToo motion of 2017-19.

Whereas the motion uncovered widespread abuse inside the movie trade, its influence was uneven. Among the accused confronted non permanent setbacks, however most returned to work and structural energy imbalances largely stay.

“So long as these [hypermasculine] movies make cash, they don’t seem to be going anyplace,” Ms Chohan says.

However as at all times, there are indicators of hope, principally from smaller, regional movie industries and unbiased filmmakers.

A brand new era of unbiased filmmakers in India is making “riveting, viable cinema” as an alternative of “mass entertainers,” Ms Choudhary factors out.

Sharp indies resembling Sabar Bonda and Songs of Forgotten Timber dug into advanced social and political layers and advised delicate tales of relationships.

The Telugu movie The Girlfriend advised the story of a lady in a poisonous relationship studying to free herself, whereas Dangerous Woman (Tamil) was hailed as a profitable coming-of-age drama advised via a lady’s lens.

In Malayalam cinema, Feminichi Fathima – with “Feminichi” a social-media distortion of “feminist” – used humour to observe a Muslim housewife’s quiet revolt towards patriarchy. On the streaming facet, The Nice Shamsuddin Household has been praised for capturing the on a regular basis resilience and complexities of contemporary Muslim ladies.

“It is a quieter motion, working from the margins,” says Ms Choudhary. “And it is not going to vanish.”