Dhurandhar, Chhaava: The year angry men dominated Bollywood

Violent, male-driven films dominated the Indian box-office and cultural conversations in 2025.

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The year before that, women-led stories had briefly reshaped India's global cinematic image, bringing accolades and new attention. But last year, Bollywood's violent, male-driven action thrillers dominated the domestic box-office and cultural conversations.

In the last weeks of 2025, Indian social media was swamped with discussions about a single juggernaut: Dhurandhar, an espionage thriller set in the backdrop of India-Pakistan tensions.

Packed with graphic violence and gangland politics, the film became the defining hit of the year, cementing its place in a crop of aggressive, hypermasculine films that drove popular discourse.

The trend was a stark contrast to 2024, when a number of films made by women - Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine As Light, Shuchi Talati's Girls Will Be Girls and Kiran Rao's Laapataa Ladies - got global attention and praise.