Indian cinema reveals a dark side

When the censors took their cutting shears to Dibakar Banerjee's latest film, the Indian director was not particularly surprised when they decided to blur and trim a controversial sex scene. But when they chose to exclude an episode in which one of the characters refers to the low caste of another, he was both stunned and disappointed.

"The elephant in the room was caste," said Banerjee, whose film Love, Sex Aur Dhokha (Love, Sex And Betrayal) features Indian cinema's first, albeit shortened, sex scene. "They would rather that elephant is not there, but it is".

The Delhi-born Banerjee is one of small clutch of directors who experts say represent an important new wave in mainstream Indian film-making, an industry that for decades has been obsessed with thin, escapist productions featuring glamorous stars, glitzy costumes and extraordinary set-piece song-and-dance routines that almost always have a happy ending. For this new group, preferred subjects are sex and relationships, communal and caste turmoil, and the increasing divide between a thriving consumer class and the traditional rural poor – topics that rarely, if ever, feature in Bollywood. As one Indian reviewer said after watching Banerjee's latest film: "Hell yeah. Welcome to adulthood, Bollywood".