At a moment when Indian theatres are increasingly crowded with spectacle — pan-Indian actioners, franchise filmmaking and historical epics — Stupid arrives as something radical: a children’s film that trusts the intelligence and emotional acuity of its young protagonist. That it is returning to theatres after becoming the first Indian film to win the BAFTA award for Best Children’s & Family Film (defeating Disney’s Zootopia) is both a milestone and a small indictment. A milestone because a Manipuri-language film has found global recognition; an indictment because the film needed that recognition to be rediscovered by Indian audiences.
Written and directed by debut filmmaker Lakshmipriya Devi, Stupid is set in Manipur, a region that rarely occupies the centre of Indian cinematic imagination. It follows Brojendro Singh, nicknamed Boong (played with irresistible vitality by Gugun Kipgen), a mischievous schoolboy who refuses to accept the quiet grief settling over his household. His father Joykumar (Hamom Sadananda), left years ago for the border town of Moreh, near Myanmar, in search of work and has since disappeared. Rumours of his death circulate, but Boong clings to a simpler belief: his father is still alive, and if he can find him, he can bring him home as a surprise gift for his mother, Mandakini (Bala Hijam).
A boy with a rebellious streak
The premise is deceptively straightforward. Yet it becomes the lens through which Devi sketches a layered portrait of a place where borders are both geographical and psychological. Manipur in Stupid is introduced not through exposition but through fragments of daily life: schoolyard gossip, bureaucratic indifference, casual racism and murmurs of insurgency. Politics seeps into the film the way it does in life — gradually, almost imperceptibly — until it becomes impossible to ignore.
From the outset, Stupid’s personal quest is situated within a landscape shaped by migration, insurgency, ethnic tensions, and the uneasy relationship between the Northeast and what is often called the “mainland.” The film rarely announces these tensions outright. Instead, they emerge organically from the environments Boong moves through.
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The boy himself is introduced as a prankster with a rebellious streak. In one of the film’s most telling early moments, he alters the nameplate of his school to read “Homo Boys School,” provoking sniggers from classmates and reprimand from teachers. His mother’s response — “A word is only as bad as you think” — becomes an understated thesis for the film itself. Prejudice, Devi suggests, is rarely innate. It is learned, absorbed and reproduced in the everyday behaviour of adults and children alike.
Boong’s closest companion in this world is Raju (Angom Sanamatum), a Marwari boy whose family migrated to Manipur decades ago. Yet he remains marked as an outsider in a region where belonging is constantly renegotiated. Their friendship becomes one of the film’s most revealing narrative devices. The bond between them is playful, loyal and occasionally fractious, but it is also shaped by the prejudices surrounding them.
Manipur’s conflicts, in small details
Over the film’s 95-minute runtime, the screenplay gradually reveals a region defined by contradictions. Hindi films are treated as unwelcome cultural imports, yet circulate through secret screening rooms. English functions as the language of aspiration and class mobility even as local identities remain fiercely guarded. Communities that have lived side by side for generations are capable of turning on each other with alarming speed.
Devi frames these tensions through a distinctly childlike sense of adventure. Boong and Raju’s journey to Moreh unfolds with whimsical logic. They travel in a hearse beside a friend’s grandfather’s corpse, slip across checkpoints, and drift through border towns that feel at once tense and unexpectedly hospitable. In a conventional political drama, these locations might be framed with menace. Here, they become spaces of curiosity. The difference lies in perspective: Boong sees possibility where adults see threat.
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That perspective allows the film to explore a politically charged landscape without becoming didactic. Insurgency, militarisation and ethnic divisions remain part of the background, shaping everyday life without dominating the narrative. Rather than explaining Manipur’s conflicts, Devi allows them to surface through small details — the nervous presence of soldiers, rumours about underground movements, the quiet suspicion with which communities regard each other.
Set in 2015, years before the devastating ethnic violence engulfed Manipur in 2023, Boong captures a version of the state that may now exist primarily in memory.
On his part, Kipgen anchors the film with a performance that balances mischief and vulnerability. As Boong, he is restless, impulsive and irreverent — a child who treats the world as something to be tested rather than accepted. His antics, from reciting Madonna’s Like a Virgin during school prayer to gleefully vandalising the school signboard, reflect a refusal to accept adult authority at face value. Yet the performance also captures the uncertainty beneath that bravado, particularly as the search for his father begins to reveal truths Boong may not be ready to confront.
Devi’s assured sense of rhythm, staging
The film’s most striking stretch takes place in Moreh, a border town that Devi renders as a crossroads of identities. Migrant workers, traders, soldiers and performers inhabit a space shaped as much by commerce as by conflict. Among the film’s most memorable sequences is a performance by JJ, a drag artist whose stage presence brings warmth and surprise to the narrative. The scene is beautifully realised — neither sensationalised nor played for novelty — with JJ becoming an unlikely ally in the boys’ search later on. In a story about margins, the film suggests that empathy often emerges from the margins themselves.
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In many ways, watching the film in 2026 carries an added poignancy. Set in 2015, years before the devastating ethnic violence engulfed Manipur in 2023, Stupid captures a version of the state that may now exist primarily in memory. The fact that the film finished shooting only a few months before the violence erupted lends its images an almost haunting quality. The fragile coexistence among communities, the rhythms of daily life in Imphal’s markets and schoolyards, and the uneasy but functional social fabric unfold with a sense of normalcy that now feels almost archival in hindsight. Which is to say, Stupid becomes more than a coming-of-age story, doubling up as a record of Manipur that has since been reshaped by conflict.
If Stupid occasionally reveals the seams of a debut feature — certain plot developments arrive conveniently, and the tonal shifts between adventure and political commentary can feel uneven — these imperfections rarely dilute its impact. What stands out instead is the clarity of Devi’s voice. Before making her directorial debut, she spent years working as an assistant director on major Hindi productions including Lakshya (2004), Rang De Basanti (2006), Luck By Chance (2009), Talaash (2012) and PK (2014). That apprenticeship shows in her assured sense of rhythm and staging, even as she consciously steers away from the excesses of spectacle.
When Stupid quietly released in India last September, it passed largely under the radar. It took a BAFTA win to widen its reach and bring the film back to theatres. The re-release offers Indian audiences another chance to encounter a story from a region that mainstream cinema rarely centres — and perhaps to compensate, however belatedly, for the indifference that often greets films emerging from beyond the country’s commercial hubs.
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