India, Sept. 23 -- Filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri's recent film The Bengal Files faced opposition due to its controversial nature. However, Vivek insists that socio-political cinema isn't new and laments that other filmmakers have stopped telling stories that resonate with the common man. Vivek tells us, "Our film industry has always raised social and political issues in their films. Be it Raj Kapoor films, Guru Dutt films, Yash Chopra films, Salim-Javed films, or Manmohan Desai films. Yes, there were entertaining songs, dances, everything, but at the end of it they always touched you because there are socio-political issues, whether the women's problems, widows with problems, marital issues, or political issues. " Citing the example of actor Amitabh Bachchan's films in the 1980s and 1990s, he says, "His character will go and take revenge against the oppressor, and that was giving everyone hope. Suddenly when the international market became very big, people started assuming that the audience is dumb, so give them dumb stories, and that's why we have been creating kind of easy answers." The filmmaker, known for The Kashmir Files (2022), The Tashkent Files (2019), and The Vaccine War (2023), shares his take on why many big-budget films struggle to draw audiences to theatres today. He says, "Which film in the last few years is about the society or the common man? I haven't seen any successful films in the last so many years. Where is that story on the son of a teacher, the hero, the son of a farmer, the son of a clerk, the son of anybody who stands up against the evil and fights them? Give me hope. Tell me, 'Yes, there are good people in this world.' That's why the film industry is dying because you have thrown common men out of your film; common man has been thrown you out of their life."...