Their incredible true story has been in the public domain for well over a decade and a half but the deeds of the moviemakers of Malegaon have never ceased to fascinate. Inherent in the tale is the drama of improbable dreams of nondescript individuals clashing with daunting societal and economic constraints and, in the bargain, engendering phenomenal acts of self-belief. Director Reema Kagti captures it all in Superboys of Malegaon, a matter-of-fact fictionalized retelling. Her film is a classic rollercoaster in which dizzying and sobering, flighty and probing, roll into and out of each other. Superboys of Malegaon, produced by Excel Entertainment and Tiger Baby, is about unremarkable lives made noteworthy by trajectories less ordinary. But, operating firmly within the realms of the real and the relatable, the film steers well clear of the cliches of the genre.

The film based on real incidents follows the group of friends who decide to bring real cinema to their small town after realising Mumbai is out of their reach. Directed by Reema Kagti, the film focuses on their progress as filmmakers but also their friendship. It keeps the film rounded and about the people which the story is meant to be about than the industry. However, through out the run time, the film does stray from the point long enough for the ending to feel out of place. In the end, it is the performances that win. The film begins with the story of a group of young boys in Malegaon who would drop everything to get a glimpse of the stars on the big screen. While one of them runs a theater, another is part of a wedding video team, one is a writer and more. However, not all of them are working towards their career is films but still are obsessed with the stories just as much. Nasir when asked to buy film reels for the theatre finds out how to make copies and decides to make his own cut of action comedies to show at his theatre. They become an instant hit in his town but are shut down because of piracy.

Reema Kagti’s Superboys of Malegaon is the kind of film that is called a crowd-pleaser in the festival circuit and a critic-seeker at the box office. Unraveling like an aesthetically charged, culturally muted performative version of Faiza Ahmad Khan’s acclaimed documentary Malegaon Ka Superman (2008), it sets out to celebrate the true story of a mofussil town’s obsession with cinema, where a wedding videographer’s vision spurs a cottage industry of spoofs of Bollywood classics. Reema and screenwriter Varun Grover expand on the hour-long documentary to explore deep-rooted fragile notions of originality, taste, and class in the realm of creativity. Unfortunately, the film suffers from the same issues that it engages with.

Malegaon, a small little town in Maharashtra, has its own little film industry. It all began after the mid-1990s when local artistes over there started making parodies of iconic Hindi films. These films were made in minimal costs and with whatever resources available. Some examples of these include Malegaon Ke Sholay, Malegaon Ki Shaan, etc. Filmmaker Reema Kagti’s Superboys Of Malegaon is a fictionalized tale of Nasir Sheikh and his friends who started the crazy film industry in Malegaon. Starting off in 1997, the film tells the story of Nasir (Adarsh Gourav), who runs a video parlour in Malegaon. He struggles to attract audiences as he screens international films. The parlour opposite to theirs is doing well as it screens mainstream Hindi films. Nasir, one fine day, learns the trick of editing and starts compiling action sequences from different films and releases them as a single film.

Nothing is more heartwarming than aspirational stories of underdogs. Only, Reema Kagti’s cinematic recreation of small-town filmmaker Nasir Shaikh’s life is more than just a tale of a man dreaming the unthinkable, and realising it. As she takes us to Malegaon and right into the heart and soul of these dreamers, it is at one level an ode to friendship, at another about the magic of filmmaking. More importantly, it reimagines how dreams can take flight, not on the wings of hardcore ambition but an emotion far more beautiful and deeper than that. Though an extended disclaimer does not vouch for the complete veracity of the story, the fact that Nasir is very much alive and part of making of the film as well as the promotions implies that the story is rooted in his reality. Yes, there is a possibility that the narrative could have been buttressed to make his story look even better than what it actually might be. Nevertheless, at no point does it sound exaggerated or artificial. Consistently, it remains an interesting and inspirational tale of Nasir (Adarsh Gourav), who runs a video parlour, and intercuts pirated videos of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee to create some original mishmash. A police raid sets him on the path of ‘original’ filmmaking.

‘Shaukh paal ke kya karega, Malegaon mein tu marega.’ This innocuous line sung rambunctiously by two childhood friends on a bike ride is both about ambition and the realisation of the futility of it, destined as they are to live within the borders of Malegaon, the small town they were born in and will probably die in. And yet, it is these two boys — along with a few pals, all of who share a common love for cinema — that have gone on to put Malegaon on the map. Superboys of Malegaon revolves around this motley crew. A charming, slice-of-life film about ordinary men doing extraordinary things, this Reema Kagti directorial written by Varun Grover is a potent, layered example of storytelling, one which strikes a chord immediately, even if you know very little of the world the film is set in. Malegaon, an unassuming town close to Nashik in Maharashtra, has made it to the news for a variety of reasons. There were the Malegaon blasts close to two decades ago that claimed many lives. Five years ago, Malegaon incubated itself in such a way that very few lives were lost in the Covid-19 pandemic, prompting other administrations to attempt and replicate its model.

Fictional translations of ready-made underdog journeys make me nervous. As do independent themes getting the mainstream treatment. A recent example is Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins (2023), a sports comedy about “the weakest football team in the world” that reduced its source material (a fantastic 2014 documentary) to a checklist of sef-conscious tropes. In terms of concept and design, Superboys of Malegaon ticks both boxes. Directed by Reema Kagti and written by Varun Grover, the 131-minute feature is inspired by Faiza Ahmad Khan’s Supermen of Malegaon (2012), a charming 65-minute documentary that revolves around the cinema-crazy residents of a small Maharashtrian town who start their own DIY-filmmaking ecosystem of Bollywood spoofs. I remember watching Khan’s documentary and marvelling at how it married the objectivity of journalism with the subjectivity of emotion. It allowed the story to tell itself, while trusting the ‘characters’ to underline its humour with cultural meaning.

“Small cell carcinoma,” the doctor begins. Two blank faces stare at him. “Have you seen Anand?” he tries again. “What happened to Rajesh Khanna.” The simple point of Superboys of Malegaon is that, even at its bleakest, life can be made sweeter by cinema. The Anand reference softens the blow of a cancer diagnosis for two movie-crazy men who’ve travelled from the small town of Malegaon in Maharashtra. When they get back, the patient’s friends gently rib him about having a rich man’s ailment. Even the doctor’s life is made a little happier. He accepts a part in their upcoming film in return for home visits, saying he’d always wanted to be an actor but his father forbade it. Thirteen years earlier, Nasir (Adarsh Gourav) and Shafique (Shashank Arora) are on a motorbike, singing an improvised tune about not being too ambitious because they’ll end up dying in Malegaon anyway. It’s an early acceptance of the cards they’ve been dealt: Nasir to shoot wedding videos and work in his brother’s photo studio, Shafique in the mill.

In 2019, a production house went into the slums of Dharavi, into the lives of Murad Ahmed (Ranveer Singh), his ladylove Safeena (Alia Bhatt) and the gully-origin rap music that emanated passionately from their mohalla. It was Zoya Akhtar’s delicately unobtrusive look at a troubled family in a community which is in no conflict with any other. Safeena, she cast, as a surgeon in the making. Six years later, Zoya’s filmmaking partner Reema Kagti replicates the community in a different setting, driven by a different passion. Doffing her hat to Faiza Ahmad Khan and her crew for their 2012 documentary ‘Supermen of Malegaon’, which is the springboard for Varun Grover’s feature film screenplay, the camera moves to Malegaon, a small town in Maharashtra, earlier known for its (hand) loom factories.

Superboys of Malegaon is inspired by Faiza Ahmad Khan’s terrific 2008 documentary ‘Supermen of Malegaon’, on a subset of residents of Malegaon who had become famous for turning their home-grown spoofs of Bollywood blockbusters into a profitable cottage industry. The filmmakers give credit to the original at the end of their film, which in essence, is a feature film with many elements borrowed from the documentary, which in turn was based on the remarkable enterprise on display in a small Maharashtra town afflicted by communal tensions and poverty, and about the power of dreaming.