Cedric Dupire’s experimental documentary reshapes Amitabh Bachchan’s stardom using overlooked moments, radical editing, and deep cultural introspection. Chasing Reflections: An Interview with Cedric Dupire by Amoborish Roychoudhury

In The Real Superstar, French filmmaker Cedric Dupire offers a groundbreaking documentary that reinterprets the legacy of Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan. Premiered at the MAMI Film Festival 2024, this avant-garde film deconstructs familiar cinema through subtle gestures, symbolic fragments, and innovative soundscapes. By avoiding iconic dialogues and focusing on nuanced scenes, Dupire crafts a meta-character that challenges viewers’ perceptions of fame, identity, and cinematic memory. This interview explores Dupire’s creative process, his inspiration from global experimental artists, and the cultural lens through which he discovered one of India’s most celebrated stars.

It was on a whim that I went to see Cedric Dupire’s documentary “The Real Superstar” at the MAMI Film Festival in October 2024. In my defense, the listing on the schedule featured a thumbnail of Amitabh Bachchan from Ajooba (1990). A documentary in a well‑regarded film festival flaunting Ajooba? The philistine in me was intrigued enough to catch a late‑evening show. And I didn’t regret the decision. What Cedric had achieved was unlike anything I had ever set my eyes on. He had made an avant‑garde film out of a Bollywood superstar and his career. For lack of a better description, I call it a documentary but the film defies categorization.

Dupire’s film strews together moments from Amitabh Bachchan’s films to tell a story about his stardom. The moments he picks are often unremarkable — a passing glance, leaving the bed, opening a door, walking up the stairs — and occasionally, high‑octane chase sequences, but he alters them perceptibly. He splices the audio, replaces the soundtrack with something entirely original or completely unrelated, cuts away or switches his gaze at unexpected moments. The most hardened Bachchan fanatic would struggle to spot where some scenes were taken from. How had a French filmmaker achieved this? How many Amitabh Bachchan films had he scoured and how did he pick those moments? It was a marvel of editing. I knew I had to speak to him. Courtesy Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, festival director of MAMI that year, I was able to get hold of Cedric Dupire and the following exchange transpired:

Amoborish Roychoudhury: I really loved your film. When I was watching it at the festival, some Bachchan fans had crept into the audience—journalists and critics who grew up with those films were all reduced to fans, hooting and whistling throughout as if they were enjoying a whole new Amitabh Bachchan film.

Cedric Dupire: It was super fun for me making the film, but I was uncertain because I didn’t know how people were going to interpret it because they already know all the movies. When they see one scene, do they link it with the original film, or will they be able to get into a new character, a new role of Amitabh Bachchan? Those were big questions for me.

Amoborish Roychoudhury: Very interestingly, the footage you picked wasn’t from his very iconic scenes. We struggled to identify some scenes because you picked small nuances—him lying on the bed, getting up, a knock on the door. You used discretion to pick scenes that weren't his most popular moments.

Cedric Dupire: It was a long process actually. It took me some time to watch all the films and select the scenes and order them.

Amoborish Roychoudhury: How did this idea come to you?

Cedric Dupire: At first, what surprised me was how people were really in love with him and fascinated by his persona. I was wondering what they were looking at when they were looking at him. When I came to India, I was surprised by this love for him and his image everywhere—in advertising, on TV, walking in the street.  

Before the cinema, it was more the fascination he stimulates that caught me. I was wondering, what could be the life of someone whom people love so much? What is your life when you're looking at your face and your image everywhere?
When I started watching the films, I could see he's not just acting one character, but through all the films it's like another meta‑character is being created. The films would be the chapters of his big super‑film on what he can represent. The question of identity—how can he perceive his identity being in several roles and being loved by everyone?

Amoborish Roychoudhury: I remember an old interview where Bachchan said, "I have cried in so many films because of my mother dying, that I don't know when I encounter that in real life—can I cry for real, or will I be faking it?"

Cedric Dupire: When I saw this interview, I was like, "Okay, it's exactly the point of the movie." The real might be changed for him, and he might be lost between the film and what is real and who he is. I tried to find more material like media archives, but I couldn't find that much.

Amoborish Roychoudhury: You used the BBC news report about his Coolie accident—just audio over black screen. That was powerful.

Cedric Dupire: That was very important for me—this moment when you skip to reality. It was something natural for me in the film, and I needed to make it sharp and really a real twist.

Amoborish Roychoudhury: You captured various ups and downs symbolically through death and reanimation scenes. To fans aware of his public life, it felt like a phoenix rising from the ashes repeatedly.

Cedric Dupire: I had one bin in my editing project called "AB is running after." I selected many shots to make him run after—it was one big purpose. He's always running after... when he sees a double, he's running after himself, and he's becoming more and more deeply crazy because he's trying to get to know who he is.

Amoborish Roychoudhury: Are you from France?

Cedric Dupire: Yes, I'm from France.

Amoborish Roychoudhury: Do people in France have awareness about Amitabh Bachchan?

Cedric Dupire: Not much, really. People who came to screenings in Paris said, "It opened the world for me. I didn't know about him at all." He's not much known in Europe actually.

Amoborish Roychoudhury: So, you were first exposed to him when you came to India?

Cedric Dupire: Yeah, that was the first time. Then slowly, while watching the movies over years, I started to appreciate his acting. But at first it was really what he represents that caught me—not as a person, but as a symbol of popular culture.

Amoborish Roychoudhury: When did this project begin?

Cedric Dupire: Maybe from 2010. I did a short program about fans of actors in India, met some Amitabh fans, and started buying DVDs in the market. Each time I went to India, I collected more. I started working with an editor maybe in 2020 or 21.  

This editor was mostly from documentary film. She didn't watch any of the full movies—only my selection. She watched 100 shots of him running, scenes of him acting different heroes. Sometimes she put together shots from the same film, so she rebuilt the film accidentally. I told her, "No, this is not possible. These shots are both from the same film."

  

Amoborish Roychoudhury: That's fascinating—an editor not exposed to his stardom was able to weave things so beautifully.

Cedric Dupire: The main scenes I wanted came quite early in the process. I knew there were important points—the birth scene from Ajooba, the Coolie accident, the shooting scene where he tries to kill himself, the scene from Hum where he's speaking with the doctor about reality. But making a meta‑character with fragments, trying to make him become more famous using shots done for completely different purposes—this was harder than I expected.

Amoborish Roychoudhury: You consciously avoided his most iconic scenes and dialogues.

Cedric Dupire: I was really focused on building my character. Even my favorite scenes—I really like when he's dancing—I didn't put any. It wasn't my matter. I wanted to build my character with these fractions of films. I didn't try to put scenes because they were iconic.

Amoborish Roychoudhury: How long did the actual editing process take?

Cedric Dupire: Eight months maybe, working with the editor. It was super long, and neither of us expected it. We had to stop and start because we didn't have enough funds to continue.  

There's something important—I wanted to keep the original sound of the films. It would be nonsense to have a scene where you just put music. But this made it very hard because Indian movies... there's always so many music and sounds. You have to compose your editing using the original sound, and this was tough.

Amoborish Roychoudhury: Can you think of other films in this space that might have influenced you?

Cedric Dupire: There's one film about an Egyptian actress called The Three Lives of Rashna. But what inspired me more was Ben Rivers, an experimental director, and Christian Marclay, a contemporary artist. Marclay did an installation called Crossfire where you're surrounded by screens and shot from everywhere—this inspired me for the shooting scene. He also did The Clock, picking footage of clocks showing every hour in 24 hours.

Amoborish Roychoudhury: Did you face issues with rights?

Cedric Dupire: The film is not possible to use commercially. We cannot use it commercially. We just screen it a few times in festivals. Even to find out all the rights holders would be super hard—there are almost 100 films.

Amoborish Roychoudhury: There was a marked preference for his earlier work—60 % from the ’70s and ’80s.

Cedric Dupire: I tried to show him getting older, but I was more sensitive with the cinema of the ’70s and ’80s. As I was working on the figure of the hero and the question of identity and doubles, I could find it more in the ’70s and ’80s. I was also more sensitive to this part of his career.

Aoborish Roychoudhury: That last scene where you list all his screen names was brilliant.

Cedric Dupire: Thank you. For me, it's a character who is trapped in an imaginary world—someone who becomes too much and is always changing identity. That's the way I wanted it to be.