British film star Riz Ahmed played his side hustle as a rapper and musician in Mogul Mowgli, a semi-autobiographical film he co-created with New York director Bassam Tariq. The world premiere in Berlin was backed by multiple sources, including the BBC and Vice Studios, and was meticulously crafted and thematically rich, though in some places it felt a little too personal. With his roles in Nightcrawler, Rogue One, Venom, and an Emmy-winning star in the HBO miniseries The Night Of, Ahmed's growing popularity should help this moderate-sized passion project find audiences after its release in Berlin.
In Nikesh Shukla's 2016 essay collection, The Good Immigrant, Mr. Ahmed writes in frustration that he is looking for a role that transcends stereotypes and reflects the multi-layered complexity of his role as a 21st-century British Pakistani Muslim. A year later, in a speech at the British Parliament building, he advocated a deeper understanding of diversity on screen, which led to the so-called "Riz Test" — an informal test similar to the Bechdel Test. With Mogul Mowgli, Ahmed felt like he had taken on the challenge of creating and incorporating a character that reflected his own multilingualism, dual pedigree, code-shifting identity, rather than being defined by it.
Ahmed plays Zad, an English-Pakistani rapper living in New York. On the eve of a trip to Europe that could change his life, Zed returned to his humble home in the western suburbs of London to visit his family. Loved feelings and old stories were shared, and fragments of Ahmed's childhood home movie added to the resonance of the biography. Even so, the long-term lifestyle between Zede, his loving but conservative father Bashir (Alyy Khan) and more devout relatives remains strained.
To make matters worse, during this rare back-to-school period, Zed began suffering sporadic leg pain, which proved to be a harbinger of a more serious crisis. After a comical clash with a so-called fan, Zed wakes up in the hospital to find himself suffering from a life-threatening illness in his immune system. After agreeing to an experimental treatment that could end his career and could lead to his impotence, he fell into an anxious and frenetic dream of childhood memories and surreal hallucinations, struggling to reconnect with his family and extract nutrients from cultural values he had largely rejected.
The handsome and enthusiastic Ahmed is a magnetic presence on the silver screen, and his real-life ability to be a rapper and songwriter also allows him to play well here. But Mughal Mowkley's screenwriting skills are less reliable, and given its high-stakes storyline, Mughal Mowkley's performance in terms of drama and emotion is unusually low. Loose editing, inexplicable backgrounds, and bland dialogue all add to this silent effect. Some of these cultural references include the overtly chanted "Toba Tek Singh", a city in the Punjab named after a legendary Sikh figure. These cultural references also make little sense for audiences outside of south Asian communities.
That said, there are some popular flashes of humor here, particularly scenes about Zed's stupid rap rival RPG (Nabhaan Rizwan), plus some possible timely thematic cut-offs, including a battle rap about the cultural appropriation of hip-hop culture between different British minorities. Ahmed and Tariq never fully exploited the potential of these sub-plots, however, they focused more on Zed's private struggles than on broader social commentary and deeper characterization.
Annika Summerson's cinematography has its lyrical moments, especially in flashback scenes, but the visuals are mostly bland TV footage, enhanced by the square aspect ratio and mundane interior location. While Mughal Mowgli was an admirablely ambitious work overall, a more complex, colorful, and bold film seemed to be trapped beneath the surface.