Using violence, it feeds into the stereotype, The Bengal Files weaponizes memory and history, turning past wounds into present propaganda, amplifying outrage while masquerading as truth and patriotism in cinematic disguise. Arnab Banerjee’s review.

Director: Vivek Agnihotri

Cast: Darshan Kumar, Saswata Chatterjee, Simrat Kaur, Pallavi Joshi, Mithun Chakravarthy, Anupam Kher

Runtime: 205 minutes (take it more as a warning than film trivia)

Cinematography: Attar Singh Saini

Star Rating: 1

The Bengal Files directed by Vivek Agnihotri continues his polarising Files Trilogy after The Tashkent Files and The Kashmir Files. With a cast featuring Darshan Kumar, Saswata Chatterjee, Pallavi Joshi, Mithun Chakravarthy, and Anupam Kher, this 205-minute political drama revisits the 1946 Great Calcutta Killings and the Noakhali riots. Framed as historical revelation, the film blends propaganda, performative outrage, and distorted memory into a cinematic spectacle. Positioned conveniently before the 2026 Bengal elections, The Bengal Files raises questions about political cinema in India, propaganda-driven storytelling, and the weaponization of Partition-era trauma. 

Political cinema in India has long mastered the art of selective amnesia—where history is less a chronicle of facts and more a buffet of "patriotic" fiction, seasoned heavily with rage bait. Most of these films claim to “speak truth to power” while actually whispering sweet nothings into the ears of a very specific, very angry demographic. The result? Predictably controversial, conveniently banned (wink wink), and almost always marketed as “the film THEY didn’t want you to see.” 

Of course, the real puppeteers here are not the government censors, but the filmmakers themselves—who know fully well that nothing sells tickets like a good ol’ moral panic wrapped in saffron cellophane. The outrage is the marketing campaign. And the pre-release drama? That’s just budget-friendly PR.

History Distorted for Political Gain

Enter Vivek Agnihotri—filmmaker, provocateur, and self-appointed revisionist historian—returning with the third instalment of his Files Trilogy. After rewriting the suspicious death of Lal Bahadur Shastri in The Tashkent Files, and unearthing fresh communal wounds in The Kashmir Files, he now offers us The Bengal Files: a three-and-a-half-hour-long sermon disguised as cinema, determined to remind you that history is never safe in the hands of people who think WhatsApp forwards are primary sources.

Let’s be clear: Agnihotri is neither historian nor chronicler—unless you consider rage-fuelled screenwriting a new branch of historiography.

Set against the backdrop of the 1946 Great Calcutta Killings and the Noakhali riots, the film claims to expose a “deliberate whitewashing” of these events by mainstream historians. A bold claim—especially from someone whose idea of evidence seems to stem from angry YouTube comment sections and ideological Reddit threads.

But of course, nuance is overrated when there's an agenda to push and elections to influence. The Bengal Files releases just in time for the 2026 Bengal elections—purely a coincidence, we’re sure. After all, what better way to secure votes than to stir ancient animosities and scream “genocide!” louder than facts ever could?

Performances Lost in Propaganda

The cast, a rotating ensemble of right-wing cinema regulars—Mithun Chakraborty, Pallavi Joshi, Anupam Kher, et al.—dutifully perform their roles, somewhere between overacting and outright propaganda. Darshan Kumar plays a present-day IPS officer on the trail of a missing tribal girl but ends up tripping over the ghost of Partition-era Muslim appeasement. The metaphor isn't just on the nose—it punches you in the face and then files an FIR for hurt sentiments.

Agnihotri, in a rare moment of apparent guilt, throws in a few token lines to vaguely balance the anti-Muslim narrative. But they land with all the sincerity of a customer care apology after you've been on hold for 45 minutes. It's not balance—it's plausible deniability. In one particularly subtle-as-a-brick scene, Saswata Chatterjee plays MLA Sardar Husseini—a corrupt politician with just one wife and one son (a saint, clearly), who waxes philosophical over a vegetarian meal featuring exactly one fish dish. He then bemoans the fashion choices of people who change clothes “ten times a day,” a line so clearly aimed at one public figure, you can almost hear the wink through the screen.

The rest of the film plays out like a grim highlight reel of India's bloodiest chapters—Partition, caste violence, and colonial betrayal—all presented with the subtlety of a sledgehammer and the objectivity of a party manifesto. Every historical figure, from Nehru to Gandhi to Jinnah, is paraded in, not for factual clarity but to serve as ideological darts thrown at a corkboard of convenient villains. 

Now, are these events part of Indian history? Absolutely. Should they be remembered? Without a doubt. But should they be weaponized, distorted, and theatricalized in the service of electoral gains? Well, if public service now means fanning communal flames, then the film might just qualify as a patriotic masterclass in how to divide a nation—one riot at a time.

As for the performances, Saswata Chatterjee manages to rise above the muck with a portrayal that—though confused—is at least memorable. The rest mostly serve as mouthpieces, turning dialogue into monologues, and monologues into manifestos. Kher as Gandhi looks well-fed and slightly rotund to pass off as the Father of our Nation. Pallavi Joshi, a talented actress, finds herself stuck playing the fictional character Bharti Mukherjee, who is, at least according to the film’s bizarre timeline a 100-year-old woman, Unfortunately, the role reduces her to little more than a confused elderly woman with memory that flickers on and off like a faulty tube light. Bharati as a character functions less as a person and more as a narrative device — her flashbacks and testimony are the film’s main vehicle for transporting us back to the chaos and bloodshed of Partition-era Bengal.

In conclusion, The Bengal Files isn't so much a film as it is a 204-minute-long WhatsApp forward with a production budget. It's less about history and more about hysteria, designed not to educate but to enrage. And in today’s ecosystem of performative outrage and clickbait patriotism, maybe that's all it takes to sell tickets.