Aatmapamphlet

Daydreams, disillusions, and a sudden rush of joy. The symptoms of a first love are everywhere in this delightful directorial debut that reworks the visual codes of Bollywood romances to great comic effect. Yet as Ashish recalls his childhood, and time speeds up or slows down, the story of his love for his classmate Srushti gets caught up in that of 1990s India. Caste and religion threaten to turn friends into foes, but Ashish and his classmates ultimately prove their friendship runs deeper than societal divisions. This plea for (national) unity, voiced by a band of ordinary schoolboys, is in no way naïve: here is a strong rebuttal to the violently divisive walls and barricades of classism and religion tearing the whole world apart; here is popular comedy of the best kind. (Berlinale)