7 Star Boys sets September 4, with Manjummel-sized hopes

7 Star Boys, the Tamil version of Antony Varghese’s football drama, reaches theatres across Tamil Nadu on September 4. The film began life in Malayalam as Aanaparambile World Cup, Nikhil Premraj’s 2022 sports drama set in a football-mad Kerala village, and producer T. Ashok of Phoenix Studio is the one bringing it across, with a new title that does not exactly hide its ambitions. Ashok says it aloud anyway: he is hoping for the kind of reception Tamil Nadu gave Manjummel Boys.

The story, as the producer tells it, follows a gang of football-obsessed kids under twelve who watch Antony Varghese run riot in local matches and quietly adopt him as their role model. When he learns the boys have nowhere to play, he gets them a ground of their own, then watches them long enough to realise raw craft is not their problem, recognition is. So he goes looking for a coach and lands the best one imaginable: I.M. Vijayan, playing a version of the game’s royalty he actually is. Whether the newly drilled team lifts the state trophy is the question the film runs on.

The casting is the fun of it. Vijayan, the former India captain, has drifted in and out of acting since Bigil, but a football film gives him something no star vehicle can: total authority the second he steps on the pitch. Antony Varghese, who arrived with Angamaly Diaries and headlined the Oscars-entry Jallikattu, plays the local hero who builds the bridge between the kids and the coach. Jakes Bejoy, currently one of the busiest composers in the south, scores the film, with Faiz Siddik behind the camera.

The original played Kerala in November 2022, so this is a patient crossing rather than a hot-off-the-reels one. But the pitch travels well: a village, a game, a team of kids nobody rates. 7 Star Boys opens September 4.