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This semi-autobiographical tale narrates the life of Samay from the moment he discovers the beauty that is cinema and falls in love with it. The cute boy with a sharp tongue who knows to humorously explain the reason behind his parents naming him Samay (Time) gets mesmerised by the idea of a film. Not wanting to make a film, his obsession begins with bunking classes to catch a film and when he doesn't have the money to watch one, he learns to bribe the projector guy Fazal to let him watch the films from the projector room. Thus begins his journey through the basic lessons of screening a film, taught by the Fazal.

The film spends quite a bit of time at the projector room with Samay feeling the light and how intrigued he is with what he sees on screen as well as the process that goes through to bring life on screen, turning light into stories. He has his bunch of friends back at home, with whom he experiments with showing film reels, each of these scenes were really charming. The cinematography is indeed the main lead here especially with the kitchen shots where Samay's mother prepares yummy dishes for him even after realising someone else is eating them.

The film stay too personal with each scene, sometimes feeling too over indulgent considering the entire film is from the little kid's pov and it is way too profound for him to relate that way. Battling his tea selling father's dislike towards films and ofcourse not realising the struggles of his father to make ends meet. Adding to that is the tryst with the law, again due to his actions without understanding the repercussions. The true heart wrenching moment is with the reels to digital transformation bit which is beautifully depicted on screen. The film's end however looked rushed.

Overall, it is a sweet tribute to cinema. With a runtime under 2 hours, one cannot complain much about the pace.

As a Gujarati, I cannot believe this is a Gujarati movie... Indeed Gujarati cinema is growing up.

Review :

The best part of this movie is its cinematography.

There are so many beautiful shots in movie & its showing culture so well.

Story is very unique & likeable. It is represent evolution of theatres & cinema. Sometimes the movie's pace becomes slow but in the end it gets emotional.

In acting department everyone doing well specially main character kid "Samay" & his father (Honorable mention : His friend "fazal")

In some scenarios, i feel length of this movie should be short but still my opinion is you must watch this movie for once & enjoy the journey of bollywood cinema.

What actually is cinema? For some it may be the pile of lies , the way to escape from the reality while for some it may be passion,love,emotion where the love is found. This is a lovely move its an ode to bollywood showing how much it connects or divide people,in which layers it affects the society.

The kid "Samaya" wants to be a movie.. or lets say movie maker . He has different eye to see everything eyes like the camera. The eye which sees light, darkness and unending love for cinema. Born in a mediocore family which lost most of the things when "Life happened." Except the glitches on the chronology of the movies shown in the theater its a smooth and great watch. The unspoken silent scenes are beautiful and the symbolism through cooking is awesome.

A normal story shown in perfect way.

Here the algorithm is very simple. You yourself know how many different films there are in India. So the Academy will not choose a bad one. Of course, it is beneficial to them in terms of audience and number. But still, it's a good movie. About how you are from a city without prospects, going after your dream. Actually, the picture is very beautiful, there are many combined scenes and angles. Some may find the story too naive. Yes, it is. But still, it deserves to be seen.

India has clearly learned how to make a nice picture with a bunch of different scenes, for little money. Shortlisted for the 2022 Oscars in the international category.

This is Gujarati cinema at it's peak. It really sets a new bar of expectations for me now as to how even the lowest of budgets can produce a film of this quality.

Gujarati films recently have just been narrowed down to either being romance dramas or comedies (the only exception being Raado (2022)). You really can't expect anything else from a Gujarati film and for a while, even I thought that this was good for a regional movie industry as almost every film that was produced was at the very least watchable and a good escape from the normal rush of life. I myself preferred to watch Gujarati film every once in a while to satisfy that inner urge to find escapism from my day-to-day routine. Now, after seeing this film, I am really starting to despise those films.

This film understands what films essentially are and what they mean to some people. The director knows not everyone in the state is going to like it and he simply does not cater to them. He just makes sure that the target audience he's going for gets the best experience they are going to get at the movies (and he succeeds at the task with flying colours).

I won't spoil anything about this beautiful film to you and I will just urge you to watch this beautiful piece of art in the biggest screen possible. Not just because this film is India's official entry for the 2022 Academy Awards but because it is a step up than the regular regional films we've been getting lately.

I personally connected with the film on a core level and was just crying in the climax with how beautifully it ends. The film ends with a shining ray of hope that if you like something, you've dedicated yourself to it, and you've understood everything there is to, you will get to it eventually. The road is not going to be easy, and there will be great hurdles in the way which will make you want to quit (even though you've come this far) but the stars eventually do line-up for you and give you that one chance which completely changes your life. Whether you take that chance or not is upto you because stars may not line-up for you again. I salute the makers of this film for making this and giving me the experience of a lifetime; of cinema.

One thing that I would like to point out is that the film is, at times, too similar to Cinema Paradiso (1999). If you've seen that film, you'll instantly start spotting the similarities it has with the film and that can drag you out a little bit from the film. However, it does have major changes near the end of the film where it manages to make an identity of it's own in realistic and brutal ways which, I thought were beautiful.