By Aejaz Ahmed Mumbai

Mumbai, May 16 (UNI) In a belated tribute 81 years after his passing, the first-ever Bollywood biopic of the Father of Indian Cinema, Dhundiraj Govind Phalke – revered as ‘Dadasaheb Phalke’ – will be made soon for a 2026 release.

It will be directed by Rajkumar Hirani with mega-star Aamir Khan playing the role of the multi-faceted personality who created history in India as the producer-director of the first feature film, “Raja Harishchandra”, 115 years ago.

His grandson, Chandrashekhar Pusalkar-Phalke, said the story is written by Hindukush Bharadwaj and his son Aviskhar Bharadwaj after massive research efforts spanning four years, delving deep into Dadasaheb Phalke’s life and his mind.

“The Bharadwajs have toiled and sweated in the venture. They had many sittings with me where I revealed to them many still-unknown facets of Dadasaheb, told to me by my mother, Vrinda Pusalkar-Phalke (his daughter). When Hirani heard about it, he readily agreed to direct the film,” Pusalkar-Phalke told UNI.

Hindukush Bharadwaj and his son said that they moved heaven and earth to understand the legendary film-maker, visited many public-private libraries, hunted materials on his life from other sources, scanned media-reports of that time, read books, spoke with octogenarians linked with Bollywood, and the family, etc.

He said that they experimented on the ancient cameras of that period, understood how Dadasaheb must have worked, doing all for the first time with little or no resources.

The Bharadwajs did the 'trick photography' Phalke did manually, recreating every possible facets of his film-making life. Then, they authenticated everything threadbare with Pusalkar-Phalke and other descendants.

Bharadwaj claimed that when Aamir Khan heard the story, his eyes became wet and he vowed not to miss working on this historical project.

It is set against the backdrop of India’s Independence Movement, when the young Dhundiraj started from scratch, growing up as an ordinary artist, overcoming hurdles and then going on to found and bequeath the world’s largest indigenous film industry to the country.

Now, the pre-production work is on, with a Hollywood studio reportedly creating AI-based designs for the period look of the film, but the actual shooting will start in Oct. 2025 with release plans next year.

Besides the Bharadwaj father-son duo, Hirani, along with Abhijat Joshi and others, treats the biopic as a ‘tribute’ to Dadasaheb Phalke, who made his mark on Indian history.

Pusalkar-Phalke said that considering the efforts of stalwarts in every department, all are optimistic that the proposed film will make it to the Oscars.

Born in Nashik's temple town of Trimbakeshwar, Dadasaheb Phalke's original surname was ‘Bhat’. He was educated at Sir J. J. School of Arts in Mumbai and Kala Bhavan in Baroda (now in Gujarat).

When he was in his early forties, he unveiled cinema history with "Raja Harishchandera" – India’s first full-length film, released May 3, 1913 – achieved after shedding blood, sweat and tears.

His ancestors, the Bhats, used to supply cut-banana leaves to the Peshwa rulers of Pune, and this trade was known as ‘Phalke’; hence that occupational surname stuck to Dadasaheb.

Then, Dadasaheb Phalke made two more films, “Mohini Bhasmasur” (1913) and “Satyavan Savitri” (1914), and shot into the limelight with India's first-ever blockbuster hit, “Lanka Dahan” (1917), in which he also introduced the concept of a ‘double-role character’.

Chandrashekhar Pusalkar-Phalke and his wife, Mrudula, said that their grandpa always credited his wife, Saraswati Phalke, for his filmmaking success.

In his lifetime, Dadasaheb Phalke made 75 films, of which only one was a talkie, ‘Gangavataran’ (1937).

Many of his films became very popular, plus he was a visionary, a trendsetter in several aspects of filmmaking which inspired future generations,” said the Pusalkar couple.

Pusalkar-Phalke describes his grandpa as an “accidental filmmaker” who had equally mastered other arts: drawing, painting, photography, theatre, model-making, and printing – and learnt magic from the American wizard Carl Hertz (1859-1924) – but his passion for films made him immortal.

The Phalke clan has been appealing to confer the ‘Bharat Ratna’ posthumously on Dadasaheb Phalke, but there is no response from successive governments, said the Pusalkar couple.

UNI-AAA ARN