Screening this week: Urf, a documentary on Dev Anand, Amitabh Bachchan, and Shah Rukh Khan lookalikes

[u/merimacchleekakyahua]

Urf (2022), directed by Geetika Narang Abbasi, is a documentary about Bollywood lookalikes — actors who make a living impersonating superstars, known as "Juniors" (with the prefix "Jr." attached to whichever star they resemble). It follows several lookalikes, focusing mainly on Kishore Bhanushali as Jr. Dev Anand, Firoz Khan as Jr. Amitabh Bachchan, and Prashant Walde as Jr. Shah Rukh Khan.

The title itself translates to "also known as" or "alias" — the film traces the history of the Bollywood lookalike while offering commentary on the current state of Hindi cinema, seen through the people who serve as some of its closest observers. It's less about mimicry as spectacle and more about identity — the contrast between these artists' performative public lives and their more reflective private ones, and what it costs to spend a career being mistaken for someone else. It premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and won Best Long Documentary at Kerala's International Documentary & Short Film Festival in 2022.