Gully Boy

Murad lives in Dharavi in Mumbai, attends university and helps with his father's driving work. He shows the lines he writes to nobody. At university he meets a rapper and stands in front of a microphone for the first time. His family does not count it as work; his father brings home a second wife and the order of the house collapses. The subject is not music but class also determining the right to speak. What Murad writes comes from his own neighbourhood and is heard for exactly that reason; the film builds success not as escape but as a question of where a voice belongs. The form rests on the neighbourhood. It was shot in the real streets of Dharavi, crowds enter the frame and the sound design does not clean up the street. The rap sequences are not mimed and the verses were written for the film. The starting point is real. The story of two musicians who built the street rap scene in Mumbai underlies it and both contributed to the production. The film took large box office in India, was submitted as the country's Oscar entry that year, and its album succeeded separately in the music market. Ranveer Singh plays Murad, Alia Bhatt his girlfriend and Siddhant Chaturvedi his mentor. Zoya Akhtar directs. Who it is for: viewers who like music films and work about urban poverty in India. Who it is not for: anyone expecting it to leave the template; the narrative follows the known shape of a rise.