The brilliant Deepak Sampat plays Narayan, the titular auto rickshaw driver in Rohit Mittal’s darkly humorous mockumentary Autohead. Mittal plays himself, in a way — he is the director of a documentary on Narayan. Initially, (fictional) Mittal’s focus is on the gareebi (poverty) of his project’s subject. As time passes and more aspects of Narayan’s personality emerge, however, it becomes difficult to keep the focus there.

After winning plaudits and praise at the MAMI film festival last year, Autohead has received a relatively silent release on Netflix globally.

While the brilliant acting and execution are refreshing and disorienting in a good way, the writing often comes off as jarringly unrealistic. The other well-handled aspects of the film come to its rescue and make Autohead an interesting watch, even if you’re not quite able to completely process the film, or inclined to ever try watching it again.

My rating: 3.5/5

Language: Hindi (English subtitles)

Duration: 1h 37m

Availability outside Netflix: Not available.

Netflix availability: Available globally with subtitles in over 15 languages.