SMALL TOWN HEROES

Reema Kagti's Superboys of Malegaon is a tribute to filmmaker Shaikh Nasir and his wacky spoofs of Bollywood films

- Suhani Singh

At the Osian Film Festival in New Delhi in 2010, Zoya Akhtar had a fan moment of her own. She approached Shaikh Nasir, the Malegaon-based director of wacky spoof films like Malegaon ke Sholay, Malegaon ka James Bond, and Malegaon ka Superman. It’s the making of the latter which would be immortalised in Faiza Ahmed Khan’s beloved documentary Supermen of Malegaon, which both Akhtar and Reema Kagti watched and loved. “When he met Zoya, he was like, ‘I am a big fan of your father (screenwriter Javed Akhtar) and I have copied all his work’,” recalls Kagti with a smile. “As we started getting to know more about his family and friends, we realised there’s a feature film in here.” The result is Superboys of Malegaon featuring Adarsh Gourav as Nasir with Vineet Kumar Singh as the writer-friend Farogh Jafri and Shashank Arora as the actor-friend Shafique.