Anurag Kashyap is seen as a controversial director. He gave us many great films like Black Friday, No Smoking, Dev D, Gulaal and Gangs of Wasseypur. However, the filmmaker's directorial debut film got embroiled in controversy and has not been released till date.

Why was the film banned

Now the clouds over its release date seem to be clearing. This film starring Kay Kay Menon, Aditya Srivastava, Vijay Maurya, Joy Fernandes and Tejaswini Kolhapure, was largely inspired by the Joshi-Abhyankar serial murders in Pune in 1976-77. The name of the film was Paanch. During that time, the censor board's scissors were used on the film and the CBFC asked to remove some scenes from the film.

The board had raised objections due to the scenes of violence and the portrayal of drug abuse. Anurag worked very hard but the film could not get the green signal for release. Apart from theatres, the film was also not allowed to release digitally.

The film will be released after 22 years

But the film was screened in many international film festivals in the past years. It received a lot of praise from those who saw it. On one hand, the film could not be released in theatres, while its pirated versions are available in many places. Now after 22 years, the film is going to get an official release. Now producer Titu Sharma has talked about its release.

While talking to Bollywood Hungama he said –

Many films have been banned before

Just recently, the news came that Anees Bazmee's Ajay Devgan starrer Naam has finally been released after 20 years. Not only Five, Anurag Kashyap's second directorial Black Friday also did not get a release date for a long time. It was released after a long time in the year 2007.