Dangal Turns 10 This December, and the Wrestling Film That Conquered China Still Hits Hard

Illustration: AI-generated with Pollinations (FLUX), free to use

Dangal reached cinemas on December 23, 2016, so this Christmas week is its tenth anniversary. It is easy to forget how unlikely the success looked. A sports drama about a father who trains his daughters to be wrestlers could have felt like a lecture, and instead it became one of the most-loved Hindi films of the decade.

Photo: Siebbi, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Aamir Khan plays Mahavir Singh Phogat, a former wrestler from a Haryana village who forces his daughters Geeta and Babita into a tough training routine. Fatima Sana Shaikh and Sanya Malhotra play the grown-up sisters, and the director was Nitesh Tiwari. The story is based on real people, and Geeta Phogat did win a gold medal at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

Photo: BollywoodKilla, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What stays with me is that the film asks hard questions about the father's methods. Mahavir is loving and also unreasonable, and the script lets us see both. The wrestling scenes were shot with real physical commitment, and Aamir's body transformation for the role became a talking point on its own.

Illustration: AI-generated with Pollinations (FLUX), free to use

The money was huge. After a strong run in India, Dangal opened in China in 2017 and did enormous business there, pushing its worldwide total past 2,000 crore rupees, which put it among the highest-grossing Indian films ever made. It also showed how widely a good family story can travel.

Illustration: AI-generated with Pollinations (FLUX), free to use

Did you watch it in a cinema, and which scene stayed with you? For me it is the final match, where the coach is locked in a room and the crowd noise does the storytelling.