Bay Area Premier

A delightful and heartwarming dramatic comedy that paints a vivid portrait of urban street kids, but with hope and initiative rather than despair. In a tiny concrete-and-tin Chennai home, two brothers see a pizza commercial whose steaming, slow-motion images make the unfamiliar food look like manna from heaven. These young boys see all the obstacles between them and their first slice as puzzles to be worked out, and they’re more than up to the task. While reminiscent of Slumdog Millionaire, this film is a breath of fresh air, not because it mimics that film — it doesn’t — but because this family film at last finds a way to shift the lens to an exuberantly Indian perspective. M. Manikandan’s endearing film has won several national awards and received a standing ovation at the Toronto Film Festival.