Anurag Kashyap’s latest directorial venture Bandar, released theatrically on June 5 by Zee Studios, has emerged as one of the most critically lauded Indian films of 2026. The crime drama, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2025 under the international title Monkey in a Cage, features Bobby Deol in what multiple reviewers have called his finest performance to date.
Written by Sudip Sharma and Abhishek Banerjee, the film follows Samar Mehra, an aging television star whose carefully curated public image begins to disintegrate when his former girlfriend Gayatri accuses him of rape after he cuts off contact with her. The narrative examines how power, celebrity, and institutional complicity intersect in contemporary India, drawing loosely from real events that have fueled the country’s ongoing reckoning with accountability in the entertainment industry.
Bobby Deol’s portrayal of Samar has drawn particular attention from critics. Indian Express reviewer Shubhra Gupta described Bandar as “Anurag Kashyap’s strongest film in a while,” awarding it a favourable rating and highlighting Deol’s ability to convey menace through restraint rather than aggression. The performance marks a continuation of the Deol family’s sustained presence across Indian cinema, with brother Sunny Deol’s Batwara 1947 also generating significant attention this month.
The supporting cast reinforces the film’s ambitions. Sanya Malhotra, Saba Azad, Sapna Pabbi, Indrajith Sukumaran, Raj B. Shetty, Jitendra Joshi, and Riddhi Sen round out an ensemble that spans multiple Indian film industries. Sunny Leone appears in a special appearance. Amit Trivedi composed the film’s score, while cinematographer Saiyed Shaaz Rizvi’s visual treatment earned praise for its claustrophobic framing of Mumbai’s power corridors.
Producer Nikhil Dwivedi’s Saffron Magicworks backed the project with an estimated budget of Rs 25 crore, a modest sum by mainstream Bollywood standards but substantial for a character-driven drama with no songs or spectacle sequences. Zee Studios handled distribution, positioning the film as a prestige release aimed at urban multiplex audiences rather than the mass single-screen market.
Despite the critical goodwill, Bandar’s theatrical run has been commercially disappointing. The film has collected approximately Rs 4.79 crore at the domestic box office as of its second week, a figure that falls well short of recovering its production costs, let alone prints and advertising expenditure. The gap between critical reception and commercial performance is not unusual for Kashyap’s filmography. Several of his earlier works, including Gangs of Wasseypur and Ugly, found their largest audiences on streaming platforms long after their theatrical windows closed.
For Bobby Deol, Bandar represents the latest chapter in a career reinvention that has seen the actor pivot from romantic leads in the 1990s to darker, more complex roles. His turn as the antagonist in Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal in 2023 reintroduced him to a younger audience, and his upcoming appearances in YRF’s Alpha and other projects suggest that this second act has considerable momentum. Bandar, regardless of its box office trajectory, is likely to remain the performance that demonstrates his full range as a dramatic actor.
The film’s TIFF premiere last September positioned it within an increasingly visible cohort of Indian films seeking international festival validation before domestic release. Kashyap, who has long advocated for Indian cinema’s engagement with global festival circuits, has used Bandar to argue that the country’s storytelling ambitions extend far beyond the song-and-dance formula that dominates commercial Hindi cinema. Whether the film’s lasting reputation will be shaped by its box office numbers or its critical standing remains an open question, but early indications suggest that audiences who discover it on streaming will find one of the year’s most compelling Indian dramas.
Bandar runs 136 minutes and carries an A certificate from the Central Board of Film Certification. It is currently playing in select theatres across India through Zee Studios.
