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The full film schedule and final late selection announcements all came out this week. The festival runs from September 5-15…
FROM the same team that brought you the international hit Indian TV series, ‘Made In Heaven’ comes a new film, ‘Superboys of Malegaon’ which will enjoy its world premiere at the forthcoming Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on September 13.
Based on the life of Malegaon (small town Maharashtra) movie maker Nasir Shaikh, the film shows what it took to make low budget (or no budget) remakes of popular Bollywood and Hollywood films.
‘Superboys of Malegaon’ relates to ‘Malegaon Ka Superrman’ (2008) – a low budget spoof with a Superman (Asif Ali) who is a skinny asthma afflicted young adult; eccentric and a little crude and caustic – and most importantly, just a local guy.
The film features Shashank Arora (‘Neeyat’), Adarsh Gourav (‘The White Tiger’) as Shaikh and Vineet Kumar Singh (‘Mukkabazz’).
Reema Kagti’s film is a celebration of amateur filmmaking culture in India – Malegaon isn’t the only area that spawned such local films – often entertaining spoofs in a local language, using non professional actors, and made with much love but little to no money or technical expertise.
In Shaikh’s case, his films became known in Bollywood and there have been documentaries about his craft and experience making these low budget comic spoofs. He himself has not made feature films for a while — preferring to make skits for Youtube and now more recently moving into podcasting.
‘Superboys of Malegaon’ is written by Varun Grover and Kagti and produced by Ritesh Sidhwani, Zoya Akhtar, Kagti and Farhan Akhtar and is produced by Amazon Prime (Amazon MGM Studios). Kagti was among the lead writers and directed episodes of ‘Made in Heaven’ (2019) and ‘Dahaad’ (2023); and also directed the feature film, ‘Talaash: The Answer Lies Within’ (2012). Kagti works closely with Bollywood icon Zoya Akhtar.
The film screens as a Gala Presentation in Toronto, among other high profile films such as Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Megalopolis’, and special presentations of Nicole Kidman in ‘Babygirl’, ‘Dahome’ by Mati Diop, ‘The Room Next Door’ by Pedro Almodovar; and much anticipated UK director 81-year-old Mike Leigh’s ‘Hard Truths’ – with a mostly black cast, and set in contemporary times.
Enjoying its world premiere in Toronto also too is ‘Boong’ by first time feature director Lakshmipriya Devi. Set in the troubled Indian state of Manipur, schoolboy (Boong – Gugun Kipgen) sets about reuniting his mother Mandarin (Bala Hijam) and father Joykumar, and enlists his friend Raju (Angom Sanamatum), who is from Rajasthan, another Indian state more than a thousand miles from Manipur, in the exercise. Boong’s father’s last known whereabouts are a town on the border with Myanmar – where he had had gone to work. Despite the serious nature of the task, the two find laughter and friendship – and since the film was made, the ethnic tensions in the region have escalated to violence.
Riz Ahmed, who is currently making a yet to untitled comedy series for Prime Video in London, as a showrunner for his Left Handed Films, stars in this high concept thriller, ‘Relay’ which will have its world premiere at TIFF on September 9. Ahmed plays ‘Tom’, a shadowy go-between who helps ex-employees get big pay offs from their previous employers for their silence or papers that would prove incriminating if revealed. In ‘Relay’ Tom finds his agenda personally compromised by his feelings towards client Sarah Grant (fellow Brit Lily James). This is set in the US and directed by David Mackenzie (‘Hell or High Water’).
Also enjoying its world premiere in Toronto is ‘Shook’ by Mumbai-born Toronto-based first time narrative feature writer-director Amar Wala. It has its first screening on Sunday, September 8.
Writer Ashish (Brit Saamer Usmani – ‘3 Body Problem’) is trying to sell his first novel and is still recoiling from his parent’s divorce, when he meets barista Claire (Amy Forsyth) and then learns his estranged father Vijay (Bernard White) has just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
Building on his short film of the same name from 2018, Wala builds a picture of a man who is quite uncertain of his future and drifting both physically and emotionally.
Probably recognisable to many in the creative field, he lives in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, a multi-ethnic area that is home to a large South Asian community and is trying to navigate and negotiate different pressures from family to career to love.
Wala has a background in making documentaries, ‘The Secret Trial 5’, about people behind bars, and directing TV episodes, ‘Next Stop’, a comedy about young black life in Toronto.
Also heading to TIFF is Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Jury award winning film, ‘All We Imagine as Light’.
ACV covered its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May and it was announced yesterday (August 16) that it will go on general release in the UK from November 29. (See link below for review, acv coverage from Youtube and Instagram).
‘All We Imagine as Light’ screens in Toronto first on Wednesday, September 11.
Getting a Canadian premiere too is Sandhya Suri’s ‘Santosh’ in the Centrepiece strand, which are billed as compelling films and from different parts of the world. Suri’s first narrative feature also premiered at Cannes in May (See coverage links below).
Malala Yousafzai is among those who will appear in the Visionaries section of the festival which is aimed at the film industry at large.
Malala is the youngest Nobel Prize Laureate at 17 and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after surviving an assassination attempt following her campaign for all girls to be educated in the Swat Valley where she lived. Now based in Britain, and married, she has also moved into supporting film production, most recently backing, ‘Bread & Roses’ (2023) about women’s experiences in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over; and the short Oscar nominated, ‘Stranger at the Gate’. (2022).
The schedule of Visionary speakers has not been revealed yet – Cate Blanchett and Zoe Saldana among several others also speaking as part of this programme.
See the full programme and schedule – https://www.tiff.net
Previously
All We Imagine as Light
Review (Youtube) – https://youtu.be/wLB9Rk_cqWo?si=MK4RmEPjzdh3QtMi
Red carpet coverage and Youtube channel – https://youtu.be/8fBmAryFmCg?si=7ITzlmUxi44rqb4p
Instagram – post award press conference Cannes – https://www.instagram.com/p/C7bVklCsFBN/?hl=en
Santosh –
Youtube – https://youtu.be/ZEKjEi_dpGk?si=kPOInmiC0i_QHdi8
