Ad filmmaker Junaid Memon’s maiden directorial venture, The Film, is an innovative film that was recently released without any ceremony. The film is Junaid’s labor of love – a depiction of the Hindi film industry from the point of view of the strugglers who relentlessly, and often fruitlessly, pursue their dreams of making it big in the celluloid world.

The Film is the story of seven young men and women who want success and fame in Hindi films without compromising on their values. The aspirants to Bollywood super-stardom are script writer Sushmita (Mahima Chaudhary), director Vijay (Khaled Siddiqui), lyricist Irfan (Vivek Madan), singer Nandini (Ananya Khare), actress Ankita (Chahat Khanna), actor Aditya (Vaibhav Jhalani) and music director Raman (Ravi Gosai). They all live in Mrs. Braganza’s (Sulabha Deshpande) cottage as (non)paying guests and collectively dream of success and fame in films. To achieve this end, they continue to struggle interminably, facing disappointments, frustrations and humiliations every day. The movie depicts their trials and tribulations, despairs and frustrations, and the bonds of friendship and shared dreams which gives them hope and the courage to persist in their efforts.

At a particularly low point in all their careers, Sushmita hatches a plot to use Shamimbhai’s name to extort money from diamond merchant and film financier Sharat Shah. She induces Vijay to fall into her plan so that they can get the money to make their film. Together, Sushmita and Vijay persuade everyone else that this is their only chance to make their dreams come true. Once everyone is convinced, the group embarks on this adventure with a spirit of fun feeling that the scheme is foolproof with success guaranteed. This one decision changes all their lives forever.

At first everything goes well and the plan seems to be successful. Unfortunately, a police officer hacks their completely unprofessional plot, and things start to go horribly wrong, setting in motion a chain of actions that spirals into unmitigated violence. While the cops are after them, Shamim’s gang, and his rival gang, want vengeance plus a share of the booty. A cat and mouse chase begins between the cops, the unlikely criminals and the mafia, and bodies are strewn all around. Everyone gets involved, the government, the police, the underworld, even the innocent Mrs. Braganza. One death follows another, leading to the final climax that hits the audience with a surprise twist. The film does not glorify crime or violence, but presents them realistically as possible within the realms of an entertaining mainstream film. The overall message is that crime does not pay, but in a harshly unfair and exploitative world, sometimes it leaves the average person who wants to beat the system and achieve her or his dream, with very few choices.

Performance-wise, Mahima Chaudhary, the only actor in the film who adds some star value gives a mature performance. She does a good job in portraying Sushmita, the strong leader of the group who has a fierce ambition to be successful without compromising her principles. Veteran Sulabha Deshpande is effective as the supportive mother figure, the endearing landlady with a tragic story who sees her dead son in these seven struggling star aspirants. Nasser Abdullah as the ruthless cop is adequate. The rest of the supporting cast comprises little known newcomers who have made brief appearances in films and advertisements in recent years. It is refreshing to see new faces in important roles, though, as far as acting is concerned, they are amateurish in varying degrees. At very best, these actors are effective in playing out their roles. Some familiar faces like Mukesh Khanna, Satyen Kappu, Rakesh Bedi, Ravi Vaswani, Ruby Bhatia, etc. appear in cameos to add to the viewer’s interest. Irfan Khan gives the voiceover for underworld don Shamimbhai, and sounds sufficiently menacing.

The most interesting aspect of the movie is its depiction of the ugly underbelly of the glamorous and glitzy Bollywood. 

The dark side of the film industry, with its institutionalized hierarchies, double standards, casting couches, corruption, plagiarism, sycophancies, exploitative relationships, is exposed in all shades of black and grey. The Film, which Junaid says was inspired by the brutal murder of Gulshan Kumar in 1997, exposes the underworld-filmmakers-financers nexus that has been plaguing the film industry for several years. It presents to us the real world of the dream-weavers who live under threats at all times. Junaid’s characterizations of producers, financers and music composers is very interesting, and have been inspired by various members from the Bollywood fraternity. So we have thinly disguised caricatures of J.P Dutta, Bharat Shah, Bappi Lahiri, etc. The infrastructure of the struggling actors, actresses, directors, singers, writers and lyricists is created with tremendous empathy. It is a world that Junaid is obviously very familiar with and portrays with respect and veracity. In the beginning, the film is more of a light-hearted, feel-good film about friendship and bonds of love between the young men and women and the old lady who mothers them. But once the plot is hatched and executed, the film turns into a fast paced crime thriller much in the Ram Gopal Verma tradition.