Thiruvananthapuram: After the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting refused to allow screening of several films at the Kerala International Film Festival 2025, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan said that the films which were not allowed for screening will be screened at the festival.
On his Facebook page, the Kerala Chief Minister described the central government’s decision to deny screening of scheduled films as “unacceptable”.
CM Pinarayi Vijayan wrote, “The Central Government’s decision to deny permission for screening of films to be shown at the 30th International Film Festival of Kerala is unacceptable.”
Add Zee News as favorite source
The state government described the ban on film screening at IFFK 2025 as an example of “dissenting voices and diverse creative expressions” in the country.
CM Pinarayi Vijayan said, “The censorship imposed on the film festival is a blatant example of the authoritarian rule of the Sangh Parivar regime, which seeks to suppress dissenting voices and diverse creative expressions in the country. Enlightened Kerala will not bow before such acts of censorship. All films denied screening permission will be shown at the festival.”
According to the organisers, screening of seven films scheduled in the last two days were stopped due to lack of mandatory exemption certificate. At present 19 films have not been allowed to be screened.
Earlier, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor had described the situation as “most unfortunate”.
Taking X, he wrote, “It is most unfortunate that an undue controversy has arisen over the Central Government’s refusal to approve 19 films which were to be screened at the International Film Festival of Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram.”
Read this also Sunny Deol gets emotional at the teaser launch of ‘Border 2’, seen in public for the first time after Dharmendra’s demise
Tharoor said that while the original list of films was very long, several clearances were obtained after his “intervention” with Union Electronics and Information Technology and Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
“The original list was very long, but several clearances were obtained after my intervention with Minister @AshwiniVaishnaw on the request of festival chairman @resulp (Resul Pookutty). The rest are awaiting clearance from the Ministry of External Affairs.”
Referring to some of the rejected films, Tharoor said, the list of 19 films suggests an extraordinary degree of cinematic illiteracy on the part of the bureaucracy. The refusal to approve “Battleship Potemkin”, a classic 1928 film on the Russian Revolution that has been watched by millions around the world (and in India) over the last century, is ridiculous.
The refusal to allow some Palestinian films reflects bureaucratic over-vigilance and not the breadth of cultural vision that should be included in the case of world cinema.
” Tharoor further urged both Minister Vaishnav and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar to grant speedy approval “to avoid any further embarrassment in the eyes of cinema lovers of Kerala and the world”.
“I have urged both Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and External Affairs Minister Dr Jaishankar to grant expeditious approval and avoid any further embarrassment in the eyes of cinema lovers of Kerala and the world,” Tharoor said.
Director Adoor Gopalakrishnan also expressed displeasure over the ban on classic films like ‘The Hour of the Furnace’ and ‘Battleship Potemkin’ and the Spanish film ‘Beef’ from IFFK 2025.
Speaking to ANI, Gopalakrishnan said, “Films like ‘Battleship Potemkin’, ‘The Hour of the Furnaces’ are classic films of cinema. I studied those films in my school days, in my film institute days. So, banning it is like a joke because almost all of us have these films at home. We keep it as a textbook. So, you can’t stop it.”
The director described the decision as a “sheer lack of understanding” towards cinema by the organisers.
He further added, “Advertising their ignorance like this is very bad for the government, very bad for the people. They should reconsider the ban on these films, and their decisions should not be based only on the title. The title of a film ‘Beef’ is not about eating cow meat. It is not about that, so the whole thing is based on a lack of understanding of the medium of cinema. So, they should have some humility to learn. It seems that this is sheer ignorance, and some No.”
At film festivals, films without a Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) certificate are usually screened after obtaining a special ‘exemption certificate’ from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
However, the unavailability of this certificate has caused current disruption at IFFK 2025.
IFFK 2025 is scheduled to be held till December 19, 2025.