The CBFC Rewrote Its Rulebook This Month. Then It Passed A Film Without Touching A Frame

The Vvaan Clears The CBFC With No Cuts

The Central Board of Film Certification has cleared The Vvaan with a U/A 16+ certificate and no cuts, no modifications and no conditions, according to Bollywood Hungama, which reported the clearance as an exclusive.

The Sidharth Malhotra and Tamannaah Bhatia fantasy film releases on 25 September. Free Press Journal and Filmibeat independently reported the same outcome, describing zero cuts and zero modifications.

The interest here is not the film. It is the timing. The CBFC issued revised certification guidelines this month, its first substantial overhaul in roughly 35 years, and the industry has spent the fortnight since trying to work out what they mean in practice.

What Happened

The revised guidelines, which Bengaluru Baath covered on Sunday, introduced new content categories including restrictions around glorification of violence and what the board describes as anti-national attitudes, mandated anti-drug warnings, and reworked the age rating structure. They drew immediate public criticism.

The central anxiety inside the industry was never the text of the guidelines. It was application: whether a scene that passed in 2024 would pass now, and how much the revised framework would increase the risk of an expensive recut weeks before release.

The Vvaan is the first notable film to go through the new process and emerge untouched. It received U/A 16+, one of the revised rating categories, with the board applying no cuts.

Bengaluru Baath notes that the Bollywood Hungama report is framed as an exclusive and that we have not seen the certificate itself. The clearance has been reported consistently across three independent outlets, but the detail rests on trade reporting rather than a published CBFC document.

The Numbers

The certification, in context:

Certificate details as reported by Bollywood Hungama, Free Press Journal and Filmibeat. Bengaluru Baath has not viewed the certificate.

Why It Matters

One clean pass does not establish a pattern, and it would be irresponsible to report this as proof that the new guidelines are permissive.

But it is the first data point available, and in certification the data points are what the industry actually plans around. Guidelines are text. Precedent is what a producer’s legal team reads before locking a cut.

The U/A 16+ rating is itself worth noting. The more granular age rating structure was the least contested part of the overhaul and arguably the most overdue, given that Indian certification spent decades with a rating vocabulary that did not describe how anyone actually watches films. A commercial fantasy film taking a 16+ rating rather than being cut down to a broader certificate suggests the new categories may be doing the job they were designed for, which is allowing films to keep their content and accept a narrower audience.

That trade-off has a commercial cost. A 16+ certificate limits the family audience, which for a fantasy film released in a festival-adjacent window is not nothing. The producers appear to have taken the rating rather than the cuts.

The Bigger Picture

India runs two certification regimes side by side. Theatrical releases go through the CBFC. Streaming content operates under a separate self-regulatory framework, which means the same story faces different standards depending on where it lands. The revised guidelines did not address that asymmetry.

That gap has shaped commissioning for years, pushing material that would struggle at certification toward platforms. If the revised CBFC framework turns out to be workable in practice, some of that pressure eases. If the next few months produce a run of contested certifications instead, it intensifies.

The honest position today is that nobody knows yet. One film has gone through cleanly. The certifications that will define the framework are the contested ones, and they have not happened yet.

Bengaluru Baath Take

We spent Sunday warning that vague certification categories get absorbed quietly at the script stage rather than fought in public, and we still think that is the risk. But credit where it is due: the first significant film through the new system kept every frame and took a 16+ rating instead of a haircut. That is roughly how a certification system is supposed to work, content intact, audience defined. One film is not a trend and we are not declaring the guidelines safe. Watch the first film the board does want to cut. That is the one that tells you what the rulebook actually says.

More On Bengaluru Baath

• The Vvaan Cleared The CBFC With Zero Cuts. The New Rulebook Just Got Its First Real Test.
• India Rewrote Its Film Certification Rules For The First Time In 35 Years

Sources

1. Bollywood Hungama, “EXCLUSIVE: The Vvaan becomes a rare ‘NO CUTS’ film; CBFC clears Sidharth Malhotra-Tamannaah Bhatia starrer untouched”, September 2026
2. Free Press Journal, “No Cuts For Sidharth Malhotra-Tamannaah Bhatia Starrer The Vvaan; Movie Gets U/A 16+ Certificate From CBFC”, September 2026
3. Filmibeat, “The Vvaan: Sidharth-Tamannaah’s Film Gets U/A 16+ Certificate With Zero Cuts & Modifications”, September 2026
4. Business Standard, “From anti-national to offensive content: What are CBFC’s new film rules?”, September 2026