India’s censor boards licensed almost 18,000 movies between 2017 and 2025, and the scores reveal sharp contrasts throughout movie industries. Among the many main ones, Malayalam cinema emerged as probably the most “family-friendly” on this interval, with the biggest share of U-rated certificates, adopted carefully by Tamil movies.
On the opposite finish of the spectrum, Bhojpuri movies had the smallest proportion of U-rated releases. Actually, Bhojpuri was the one Indian language the place a decrease share of movies have been licensed U than in English cinema — an uncommon reversal.
These conclusions are based mostly on information collated by CBFC Watch, an unbiased analysis undertaking devoted to exploring movie censorship actions throughout India. Movie certifications fall into broadly three teams — adults solely (A), unrestricted for all ages (U), and parental steerage/normal viewers (UA).
The evaluation consists of all movies, quick movies, and music movies with a period of greater than 60 minutes. Given this one-hour cut-off, it’s affordable to imagine that the majority such instances are full-length function movies.
The chart beneath reveals the share (in %) of films rated U, U/A and A inside every language within the 2017 and 2025 interval
Extra A-rated movies in Telugu and Kannada
In relation to A-rated content material, solely Telugu and Kannada language films crossed the ten% mark — the one two amongst Indian languages to take action. English movies licensed in India, nonetheless, topped the listing general, with greater than 16% carrying an grownup ranking. Amongst Tamil and Malayalam movies, the share of A-rated titles was underneath 7%.
Whereas the above findings concentrate on the foremost movie industries, together with smaller industries shifts the image a bit. Odia cinema emerges as probably the most family-friendly, with round 42% of its movies rated U. Only one.2% of Odia movies have been rated A — the bottom share throughout all languages — adopted by Gujarati, at simply 2.3%. Although the variety of films launched in these two languages are comparatively a lot decrease compared.
It’s value noting that an Odia dub of a Tamil movie is handled as an Odia launch on this evaluation. The identical applies to different languages. Furthermore, there are cases the place the identical movie, when launched in numerous languages, has acquired totally different scores. In such instances, the variations have been counted as separate movies, because the certification itself is the main target of this examine.
Curiously, most Indian movies are rated U/A. In each language, over 50% of movies are rated U/A.
The open supply information base developed by Diagramchasing.enjoyable may be accessed right here https://cbfc.watch/
Printed – September 18, 2025 07:00 am IST
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