Ahead of the release of The Bengal Files, director Vivek Agnihotri claimed that West Bengal theatre owners are refusing to screen the film during an interview with NDTV. Agnihori's film, based on the Direct Action Day and the Calcutta riot in 1946, has triggered a backlash ever since the trailer was launched in Kolkata on August 16. A large section of the Internet alleged that the film showcased the riot to milch identity politics in Bengal.
During a conversation with NDTV's Shiv Aroor, Agnihotri recalled that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee publicly said that she wouldn't allow the film almost two years ago. "About a year and a half or maybe two years ago. I don't remember the exact date, the Chief Minister of West Bengal publicly in a press conference, said that some people have been funded and sent to make a film called The Bengal Files, which humiliates Bengalis. I will never let it. I won't allow it. After that, lot of people started threatening us," said Agnihotri.
The Kashmir Files director alleged that FIRs started to get filed after he announced the film's release date. "When we announced the release date of the film, I was in America. We had gone to the US to do special screenings there in 12 cities. Then I started getting FIRs, and not just one, multiple FIRs in different cities. That's a strategy to demoralise us, to harass us, to entangle us in legal issues. And even yesterday, I received an FIR, you know, so every second day some FIR is coming," Agnihotri tells us.
Agnihotri recounted what happened during the trailer launch of the film in Kolkata on August 16.
"Then after that, when we came from the US, straight away, we went to Kolkata to release the trailer on 16th August, if it's appropriate, we release on 15th August, yeah. As soon as we landed at the airport, we got to know that the theater trailers are launched in theaters in multiplexes. They have refused to take it under political pressure, and somebody used the term that there will be political turmoil if we should. So finally, we said, okay, the safe space, since the entire unit had landed in Kolkata, so we said, let's do it in a five star hotel.
"And as we were doing it, then there was an intervention, and the police came and they stopped it, cut the wires, and they also said the same thing, that we have political pressure and we have to stop it," Agnihotri recalled.
The advance bookings of the film The Bengal Files started on August 31. Till now, the Bengal government hasn't issued any statement stalling the release of the film as Agnihotri claimed.
"In last 24 hours, the development is because we opened the advanced booking and the theaters have been finalised. I've got to know through my distributors. The distributors had different religions in Bengal. It will create history. But I just learned that theatres are now refusing to show it because they fear that there will be a political turmoil," he said to NDTV.
The film is the third instalment in Vivek Agnihotri's Files trilogy after National Award-winning movies The Tashkent Files (2019) and The Kashmir Files (2022). It also stars Mithun Chakraborty, Saswata Chatterjee, Anupam Kher, Priyanshu Chatterjee and Darshan Kumar. The film will release in theatres on September 5.