2025's NATIONALIST NARRATIVE CATALYST

THE year ended with a roar on the silver screen and its echo defined everything that followed.

- PRABHU CHAWLA

The success of Dhurandhar was not only cinematic but civilisational. It did not simply break records. It set the emotional tone of a nation. When audiences rose to their feet as credits rolled on December 5, they were not merely celebrating a film's craft. They were acknowledging a sentiment that had long been searching for voice.

By its 21st day in theatres, Dhurandhar was reported to have crossed the ₹1,000-crore milestone worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing Indian film of the year and the fifth-largest success of all time. In its triumph lay the signal that the nationalist mood of India had moved from politics to popular imagination, that cinema audiences had begun dictating the nation's emotional narrative rather than following it. The country's biggest industry-long accused of speaking in borrowed accents and cosmopolitan codes-had suddenly begun to reflect the nationalistic mood.

What made this moment even more significant was the ecosystem it revealed. Throughout 2025, Hindi cinema experienced what industry analysts called a "steady flow of steady performers", rather than dependence on blockbuster spectacles. In the first half of the year alone, 17 films crossed the coveted hundred-crore mark at the domestic box office, a dramatic increase from merely 10 such films in the corresponding period of 2024. For decades, Hindi cinema had lived through the boom-bust cycle where two or three massive releases carried the annual load. In 2025, the pattern inverted. The industry witnessed momentum driven not by 'event cinema', but by films that connected with audiences through authenticity, emotional honesty and a willingness to address what people actually felt rather than what critics prescribed they should feel.