Filmmakers like Ram Gopal Varma, Sanjay Gupta and Anurag Kashyap have sought inspiration from notorious cases and incidents and tried to portray them at the big screen.
After spotlighting corruption in police in his film "Department", Varma has set to work on a movie according to the 26/11 (2008) Mumbai attacks, by which about 170 people were killed. The film went on floors in March this year.
Gupta's "Shootout at Wadala" starring John Abraham, Anil Kapoor, Kangna Ranaut, Sonu Sood, Tusshar Kapoor and Manoj Bajpayee, will chronicle Mumbai Police's first-ever registered shoot-out, wherein Surve was shot dead. The incident happened in Wadala in 1982.
Gupta says this is a challenge to recreate the bygone era.
"It is essentially the most challenging film which I'VE shot till date. It covers the years 1978-81. Everything has changed, including Mumbai, and getting that right was a hard task, " he said.
Gupta's film, however, bears an in depth link to reality as he has obtained permission to call the characters after the real-life policemen involved within the incident.
Meanwhile, director Kabeer Kaushik is gearing up for the discharge of "Maximum", set in Mumbai in the course of the early 2000s, when the nexus between land mafia and politicians was at its height. It features Sonu Sood and Naseeruddin Shah in prominent roles.
Sonu believes the increased selection of crimes has propelled the usage of real-life incidents in film scripts.
"There were times when people were making films on real subjects and real cinema, but later it faded out. Lately there's a lot of movement in our society, if it is crime, scams; so filmmakers get more reasons or incidents to make films, " Sonu told.
"People are running in need of subjects, they do not have thousands of subjects; so that they hunt for those topics and things that happen around us and so they make films on these, " he added.
Filmmaker Kumar Mangat is planning to bring Sobhraj's 1986 Tihar jailbreak saga on celluloid in "Jailbreak", while director Vivek Agnihotri's "Buddha in Traffic congestion" could also be in keeping with true incidents.
Anurag Kashyap's two-part series "Gangs of Wasseypur" puts the spotlight at the coal and scrap trade mafia in Wasseypur in Jharkhand, and Zoa Morani-Imran Zahid-starrer "Marksheet" attempts to uncover the scams in India's education sector.
In the meantime, a variety of filmmakers are toying with the speculation of constructing a movie on much publicised Bhanwari Devi case of Rajasthan, where a nurse, who had illicit relations with a central authority minister, was abducted and murdered.
The films come as a difference from the regular Bollywood fare.
Acclaimed filmmaker Dibaker Banerjee, who has presented a hard-hitting account of corruption within the Indian political system in "Shanghai", says he's glad to peer people opening as much as "alternative cinema".
"An alternative has unfolded. Earlier people wanted an alternative, but it surely wasn't there. Now as a result of multiplexes, new studios and more money, on account of economic liberalisation, persons are willing to make fresh films, " Banerjee told.
Adds actress Neha Dhupia: "IT'S nice to peer that we have got some breakthrough directors who've come forward and are willing to make films. What's even better is they have the support of the people, who've the money and those that have the talent."
Earlier films like "NO PERSON Killed Jessica", "Not A Love Story", "Ragini MMS", "Monica", "Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey" and "Rakta Charitra" have also been inspired by real-life incidents.
