Chandu Champion

Kabir Khan's film tells the story of Murlikant Petkar. Petkar was a soldier; after being shot in the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965 he was left paralysed from the waist down. Years later he took up swimming and won India's first Paralympic gold at the Heidelberg Games in 1972. Kartik Aaryan plays Petkar and prepared seriously for the physical demands. The best part of the film is not the medal but what precedes it: the months in the hospital ward, a country that did not recognise the athlete, and the fact that for years nobody had heard the story at all. Petkar's medal went unacknowledged officially for a long time. It opened on 14 June 2024. Critics were largely positive, praising Aaryan's performance, Khan's direction and the cinematography. At the box office it fell short, taking around eighty-nine crore worldwide and counting as a commercial failure. Who it is for: viewers who like sports biographies drawn from real lives. Who it is not for: anyone tired of the genre's emotional templates, which this film applies in full.