The residents of Malegaon look to Bollywood cinema for a much-needed escape from daily drudgery. Amateur filmmaker Nasir Shaikh gets inspired to make a film for the people of Malegaon, by the people of Malegaon. He bands together his ragtag group of friends to bring his vision to life, thereby bringing a fresh lease of life into the town.
Farhan Akhtar Reema Kagti Ritesh Sidhwani Zoya Akhtar Kassim Jagmagia Vishal Ramchandani Angad Dev Singh
Supermen of Malegaon
Canada
Toronto International Film Festival
UK
BFI London Film Festival
India
Canada
India
UK
A slight and sweet form of mid-day festival fluff. The humor gets annoying and it's stretched too thin and feels exhaustive long though. I bumped it up to a barely recommended when I saw it was based on a true story.
St Louis International Film Festival
Likeable Indian dramedy, apparently based on some level of true story, about a group of outsiders in a small village who create a local film industry. Like a cornier Ed Wood with Be Kind Rewindian characteristics. This is the exact sort of subject matter that I like.
TIFF #38
*World Premiere*
The Bollywood version of BE KIND, REWIND, within an independent cinema instead of a mom-and-pop videostore.
A love letter to movies that pulled at my heartstrings. Really shows how the chase for money and the influence of financial gain on filmmaking only takes away from the core of it, and how these filmmakers are happiest when making movies purely for the love of it. Exposure doesn’t pay the bills, but passion feeds the heart.
The character arcs are a little all over the place. Scene to scene it can feel like they’re entirely different people. The protagonist specifically flips back and forth between underdog hero and sleazy greedy hack.
Enjoyable though! Will make some cry.
A crowd pleaser about friendship and no-budget filmmaking, this got much richer and more emotional in the second half, and not a minute too soon. Right as its initial scrappy charms are wearing thin, and it veers toward cheap sentiment, it smartly merges the two threads into something much more satisfying all around.
That goofy underdog vibe is its main appeal, as the characterizations are thin. The protagonist, Nasir, is kind of a dick; he doesn’t change so much as he gets the opportunity for his selfishness to overlap with other people’s desires.
The script shows little interest in its women characters. Nasir’s wife (played by Muskkaan Jaferi, who looks like Aubrey Plaza’s Indian doppelgänger) is a lawyer in the…
This was a religious experience✝️🍷🫓
Theater crowd was next level, probably my favorite screening ever. Felt like I was in an Indian single screen cinema. So active, so engaged. No shushing bs. This is how movies are meant to be watched. A brilliant story brilliantly told by the always wonderful Reema Kagti. A score that fucking bangs. Couldn’t ask for much more.
And the cast & crew were there for a q+a afterwards. And the people who the movie was based off of were there. And I cried.
Also SHOUT OUT HARD CIDER for elevating an already out of body moment‼️‼️‼️
WHAT A TIFF DAY ONE
A well-meaning comedy about filmmaking, friendship, loyalty, and hometown pride. The Superboys of Malegaon is made with plenty of heart as it's central band of cinema enthusiasts put together a passion project of shoestring proportions in an effort to keep their independent cinema alive.
Kagti's biopic touches upon big dreams, creative conflicts, and even some amusing product placement. There's some warmly funny moments and it is admirable that the creatives here insist on modest, homegrown production rather than fleeing to set their sights on major opportunities in Mumbai.
Narratively, the film is a little disjointed though, mostly across the middle stretch...it doesn't feel entirely whole. Some of the plotting is a tad predictable too. Nevertheless, this is made with a…
“People want to see themselves onscreen.”
TIFF #22
I love movies about movies, and this was no exception. While I found the second act to drag immensely, that final act is so beautifully realized that it pulled me all the way back in. The creative energy coming off the film is super contagious; I suddenly want to do PROJECTS.
Absolutely perfect film to end TIFF with.
TIFF24
I felt truly honored to be at this premiere, sitting fairly close to the filmmaker and actors. The vibe was electric, even starting with the annoying TIFF promo stuff.
The last 30 minutes, once they started making the Superman movie, was really great. Up until then, it was formula all the way. Never boring, but classic conflict and resolution, all pretty much by the book.
I’m not saying the theater didn’t get dusty, because it most certainly did. And a couple of scenes had me laughing hard.
This was definitely not the best thing I’ve seen here, but absolutely the most enjoyable so far.
“Let’s make our own picture”
A beautiful, amazing film about the magic of low-budget, indie filmmaking. If I needed something to tell me to get off my ass and make a movie, this was it. The Superman shots…come on!
SLIFF 2024 Film 2
All I can say is...this was a labor of love. The rest is in Allah's hands.
getting the boys together one last time
