Small-town India’s DIY film industry comes to London festival with Superboys Of Malegaon

LONDON – The bright lights of the British capital are a world away from Malegaon, a down-at-heel textile town in the backwaters of Maharashtra state in western India.

But the two have come together at 2024’s London Film Festival, where the remarkable story of Malegaon’s unlikely film industry success had its European premiere on Oct 10.

Superboys Of Malegaon (2024), by director and producer Reema Kagti, follows the feel-good true story of amateur film-maker Shaikh Nasir and his friends, and their no-budget parodies of Bollywood and Hollywood classics such as Sholay (1975) and Superman (1978).

With do-it-yourself film-making techniques, amateur actors and the unique flavour of local dialect and comedy, his works became instant local hits.

They then gained international recognition with the release of a 2008 documentary of their work, Supermen Of Malegaon, which inspired Superboys Of Malegaon.

Malegaon’s links to the giant Hindi-language film industry, though, are not so distant. By a twist of fate, Superboys’ co-producer Zoya Akhtar’s father Javed Akhtar wrote Sholay, which inspired Nasir’s passion for film-making.

“It’s a very, very big story from a very small town in India,” said Zoya Akhtar. “It tells you how connected you are, especially with cinema.”

Kagti, who has worked with Akhtar for three decades and founded production company Tiger Baby Films in 2015 with her, said: “Nasir’s influences and my influences are very similar.

“So, it was really like a privilege to be able to give a hat tip to so many people, so many actors, so much of the Indian film industry.”

Superboys is an ode to the determination of Nasir, played by Adarsh Gourav, who starred in the Oscar-nominated film adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s 2008 Booker Prize-winning novel The White Tiger (2021).

In Malegaon, some 300km from India’s entertainment capital Mumbai, video parlours – small picture houses – are a haven for labourers keen to escape the daily slog of industrial weaving looms.

Nasir’s films offer comedic respite and a chance to see their town portrayed on the big screen, said Kagti.

Gourav added: “Every person who was part of that film has been immortalised and made into a hero of sorts, and it’s given them a reason to not just exist but to celebrate life.”

And it was Nasir’s “appetite for risk” that drew him to the role. “To be born in Malegaon and to sacrifice a life that was mundane but was also well set, I think there’s a very big risk that he took... (a) willingness to sacrifice everything that he had.”

With no budget and little experience beyond his love for films and gigs as a wedding videographer, Nasir has to improvise and use homespun techniques to make movies.

While filming the Superman spoof, the hero dresses in comical red shorts with drawstrings dangling out, flying with the help of wacky green-screen contraptions, while Nasir films tracking shots by balancing on the back of a truck hurtling down a bumpy road.

Superboys touches on everything from poverty to love, never straying far from Nasir’s unwavering belief in the power of a camera – and some imagination – to turn the mundane into something extraordinary.

“The story is so universal that we feel there is a global audience,” said executive producer Ritesh Sidhwani.

The film was shown at Toronto International Film Festival in September and, with its screening in London, Sidhwani hopes it will attract audiences beyond the Indian diaspora.

Nasir’s homemade local films succeeded in creating a place in India’s sometimes impenetrable film industry for Malegaon.

Akhtar said it is a lesson for everyone, particularly in a world of smartphones, where everyone can be a film-maker.

“People who watch this film will realise that they don’t need to wait for a big break. They can just take that step,” she added.

Today, Mollywood, as it is sometimes called, lives on, with some actors from the original films continuing in Nasir’s footsteps, sharing their do-it-yourself creations on platforms such as YouTube.

“That industry is now a part of Indian cinema’s history,” said Akhtar.

In Superboys, the writer of the spoofs, Farogh, tells Nasir: “You told our stories, in our own voices. You gave us dreamers a place in history. In the history of Indian cinema, you’ve added a page for Malegaon.”

Superboys Of Malegaon is set to open in cinemas in India in January 2025, before streaming on Prime Video. AFP, REUTERS