“Jackie Chan could come to Malegaon,” says a young man who has had the misfortune of being born there. “But his films won’t.” The young man is Nasir, the protagonist of director Reema Kagti’s new film, Superboys of Malegaon. Played by Adarsh Gourav, Nasir is the sort of cinephile who would have been logging at least three movies a day on Letterboxd had he been born a decade later, perhaps in a metropolitan city. And as hyperbolic as his words are, there is an element of truth to them. As we speak, the German auteur Wim Wenders is touring the length and breadth of India, taking selfies with Madhabi Mukherjee and reclining on Satyajit Ray’s favourite armchair. But you could be forgiven for not remembering the last time one of his films received a theatrical release here.

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.

In one of my most favourite scenes from Faiza Ahmad Khan’s Supermen of Malegaon (2008), the protagonist Nasir is having a verbal duel with brother Nadeem, who wants to follow his foot-steps and make a career out of making amateur films in Malegaon. After making Malegaon Ke Sholay – a parody of the iconic 1975 film – Nasir became a local celebrity. Nadeem is showing his parody of Tere Naam (2003) to the camera, when Nasir rebukes him for wanting to pursue it as a career. It’s a fascinating divide Khan captures in her documentary, where one brother is seduced by the magic of cinema, while the other seems blinded by its glamour and fame. For someone so close to the dream machine, it’s incredible how Nasir is able to suss out the lies in the oft-romanticised maxims: ‘Follow your passion,’ or ‘Conquer your dreams’. He tells Khan how filmmaking has to be a hobby. There are no returns here, and one can’t run a household on it. “Main khud phaste jaara ismein (I, myself, am getting trapped in this).”

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.