Bhaimon Da, the latest Assamese film, which has been running to packed houses for the last four weeks, seems to be marking a notable turn for contemporary Assamese commercial cinema. It is the fourth consecutive year since 2022 that the local film industry has managed to dish out at least one smash hit in a year. In 2022, it was director Kenny Basumatary’s comic caper Local Utpaat, which ran for around thirteen weeks at the local theaters.
On the other hand, in 2023 and 2024, young director Suvrat Kakoty led the charge with the mass entertainers Sri Raghupati and Bidurbhai, respectively. Both of these managed to strike gold at the box office and, in fact, took their place among the highest-grossing films of all time in Assamese cinema. Even the tacky Dr. Bezbaruah 2 (2023), the sequel to the classic Assamese hit of the 1970s, raked in the moolah, thanks largely to the wide publicity (produced by a well-heeled regional media house) and Zubeen Garg’s extended cameo as a goofy policeman.
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These developments have brought enthusiasm back among audiences and the film fraternity alike. What seems to have worked in the case of all these films mentioned is that the situations and the emotions generated were identifiable with the majority of the audiences, with the films made in a popular sensibility and form found in all the major film industries across India. In such a scenario, investments are bound to increase, and films with commercial prospects are sure to light up the screen in local theaters in the coming days and months.
In fact, it is since the year 2019 that the tides seem to have changed for Assamese cinema, with independent filmmakers like Reema Das, Bhaskar Hazarika, Manjul Baruah, and others who brought in a fresh wave and impressed both festival circuits and viewers. In the same year, the established popular stars Jatin Bora and Zubeen Garg also made their presence felt with two mass commercial films which were able to bring audiences to theaters after years. Currently, with Bollywood films going through a severe slump, it is a golden opportunity for a regional and marginal filmmaking fraternity like here in Assam to reignite and cement its connection with audiences by making solid films that do not dither when it comes to delivering the goods.
What is unique about the latest hit Bhaimon Da as a commercial Assamese film is that it is a biopic on the noted Assamese film director Munin Barua, who passed away a few years ago. It seems the makers have taken a leaf out of the trend of biopics from Hindi cinema in recent times to attempt a film on the life of the successful director, who was active from the 1980s to the early 2000s in the world of Assamese cinema. Nevertheless, attempting to make biopics is a worthy aim as it serves cinema and society by unearthing stories of both known and unknown figures of history.
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Usually, biopics on filmmakers as a genre are not the stuff of mainstream cinema, and it is to the credit of the makers of this film that they have been able to present it as a popular film, providing wholesome entertainment in the good old way. It is in this aspect that Bhaimon Da turns into a triumph of sorts, as many parts of the film are created like the old films of Barua (and by extension, like popular older Assamese films in general), which have heightened the nostalgic value of the film and have made it such a big hit among local audiences. The first parts of the film, which are set in the 1960s and 1970s, are particularly effective in this direction as they portray Munin Barua’s growing up years in a small-town socio-cultural milieu.
The screenplay of the film in the first half before intermission is busy, and stitches up scene after scene from the filmmaker’s life, from his college days, involvement in dramatics, and a developing romance with a young actress. As the heir of a well-off household of a mouzadar (revenue official), Bhaimon (Munin Barua’s pet name) apparently displays nothing exceptional apart from a consistent involvement in playing the mandolin and going to the cinema frequently. Developing his talents under the guardianship of one of his college teachers, who is a dramatist, Bhaimon begins to develop a feel for writing scripts for plays and eventually co-directs his first film with his mentor, which turns out to be an absolute non-starter.
In the subsequent sections, perennial challenges faced by Assamese cinema, like the distributor-exhibitor nexus (controlled by businesses from mainland India) and piracy, etc., are included in a somewhat piecemeal manner, side by side with episodes of Barua’s emergence as a filmmaker through the late 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. The periodic details are functional but importantly fit in with the intent and point of the film, which is to pay an accessible and glowing tribute to a man who steered mainstream Assamese cinema in difficult circumstances for years.
As a filmmaker, Munin Barua did not think of himself as a ‘big director,’ and as such, he had a grounded approach to the films he happened to make, irrespective of their fate as works of art. He was, in a sense, an illustrative old-school director, like those filmmakers of yore in cities like Calcutta or Mumbai, who were determined to tell a story and make their producers happy and did not really bother about their critical reception. In fact, as one of the commercially most successful directors of all time in Assamese films, the late Barua knew his audience.
He was an unassuming man, and as a filmmaker, he had no illusions about the kind of mass family dramas he made. It is noteworthy that he was equally adept and successful in the popular mobile theater productions of his state at one point in time. In fact, many of his films were adaptations of his own scripts written originally for mobile theater companies. His high point as a film director was Hiya Diya Niya (2000), which intelligently combined elements of melodrama and romance and became a huge hit, apart from making stars out of its lead players. However, his film Dinabandhu (2004), a poignant drama (based on a script by littérateur Bhabendra Nath Saikia), was critically acclaimed and won the National Award for the best feature film in the Assamese language.
So, it came as a kind of validation for him, as it happens in India when a director wins a National Award for his or her film. Interestingly, a large part of the narrative heft of Bhaimon Da is built around this aspect through flashbacks, as a few of his past close associates celebrate his winning of the respected award from very humble beginnings. However, in the process, the film does not precisely go into the key details which went into the making of the sensibility of a filmmaker in Munin Barua. To put the matter in perspective, it is worth remembering that Munin Barua had carried within him a critical sensibility (middle of the road, to be precise) as a filmmaker, as the star-studded sensitive social drama Prabhati Pokhir Gaan from the early 1990s shows. It is in missing such aspects and incorporating them that the film fails in paying its full due to the late filmmaker.
By the time Bhaimon Da arrives in its second half, the film gets busier in providing brief snapshots of current stars of Assamese cinema who started their careers largely under the tutelage of the director. In doing so, the film draws in the whistles from the crowds but almost moves Barua’s journey to the background. As a result, the second half of the film loses much of the grip of the first section.
The last segment of the film attempts to bring into the picture his equation with his somewhat troubled son, but does not throw much light on the filmmaker’s inner life. Equally glaring in this regard was the lack of any meaningful scenes with his wife, who was relegated to almost oblivion in the second act. As such, Bhaimon Da manages to become a middling biopic and becomes engaging only in parts. Perhaps, part of this issue arises from the fact that the narrative of the film is positioned as a eulogy to the filmmaker and hence struggles to clearly portray the lows and highs of a creative personality through its runtime of almost three hours. On the other hand, the love and respect which Munin Barua commanded among his peers for being the gentleman that he was reverberated through the film and enlivens things.
Debutant director Sasanka Samir has succeeded in drawing effective performances from his large cast and in etching a believable social world of the bygone days of Assamese cinema and its players. As a director, his approach has been marked by sincere involvement and commitment to bring to fruition what was intended. Emerging young talent Bondip Sarma, who has played the titular role, deserves special accolades as he invests his character with a quiet dignity and grace, even when the film’s proceedings seem to go helter-skelter.
In fact, in hindsight, it appears that the film has been loved by the people of the state because it is not derivative in its story, characters, or emotions, which have furtively enhanced the film’s appeal. A successful popular film is often a result of the happy merging of authorial intent and audience desires in that it becomes a collectively shared pleasure at a particular time. In the days to come, Bhaimon Da will remain a record of how the Assamese film fraternity understood and wanted to remember one of its most successful commercial directors from the celluloid era. Now that the film has turned out to be a massive hit, and also since it contains a series of punchy portraits of Assamese cinema’s stars, it will also work as an index to how its audiences understood and remembered its favorite stars.
It is telling that Assamese cinema continues to face challenges from the business dimension, even as Bhaimon Da has become a big hit. The leading English daily of the region, The Assam Tribune (23 June 2025), very recently reported that the number of theaters (around 70 to 80) in Assam is still very limited, which hinders commercial prospects for Assamese films. It is worth remembering in this context that around the time when Munin Barua made his last hit Ramdhenu in 2011, the limited number of theaters did not really help the producers, even though the film ran well.