The Bengal Files: CBFC Certification, Edits, and Runtime Details

Ziya Khan August 31, 2025Last Updated: August 31, 2025

Director Vivek Agnihotri, known for impactful films like The Tashkent Files (2019), The Kashmir Files (2022), and The Vaccine War (2023), is back with his latest hard-hitting project, The Bengal Files. The makers secured the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) certificate well in advance, and here’s an exclusive look at the certification process and related updates.

Initially The Bengal Files was not approved by the CBFC’s Examining Committee and was referred to the Revising Committee (RC) due to its sensitive content. After review, the RC approved the film but requested several changes. Notably, the filmmakers were asked to remove ‘contemptuous’ language directed at the transgender community and replace it with more appropriate terminology. Additionally, images of certain prominent personalities were removed or replaced.

To comply, the makers submitted supporting documentation for the historical events depicted and provided consent letters from the parents of child artists involved. The disclaimer was also enhanced with a larger font size and a voiceover as per the committee’s guidance.Following these modifications, the film received an ‘A’ certificate. The censor certificate lists the film’s duration at 204 minutes and 30 seconds, which translates to 3 hours, 24 minutes, and 30 seconds.

On June 25, 2025, the certificate was granted. Nearly two months later, on August 26, the makers voluntarily requested further changes at 29 points. Dialogues were altered for sensitivity, for example, changing “100 years old” to “An old woman who has dementia,” and the name Gopal Mukhopadhyay was removed from several scenes. Visual changes included deleting a vulture-and-baby scene, adding an owl scene, and swapping images and text in multiple sequences.

They also extended the duration of a newspaper scene by one second and added a 68-second newspaper-text scene replacing another. Overall, these edits resulted in deleting 1 minute 42 seconds and adding 1 minute 44 seconds, making the revised runtime 204 minutes and 32 seconds—3 hours, 24 minutes, and 32 seconds.With this length,

The Bengal Files becomes one of the longest Bollywood films in recent times, surpassing Animal (2023) by one minute and outlasting the theatrical version of Pushpa 2 (2024) by four minutes. The film stars Mithun Chakraborty, Darshan Kumaar, Pallavi Joshi, Saswata Chatterjee, and others, and is scheduled for release on September 5.