Mogul Mowgli

When Zed (Riz Ahmed) raps, he does it ​“for the mosque and the mosh pit.” His sharp, fever­ish bars arrive with the tenac­i­ty of slam poet­ry and the weight of his world with­in them. His life is in his lyrics: the racism he’s faced; his strug­gles with iden­ti­ty; the endur­ing ques­tion of ​“where are you real­ly from?”

He finds space in his music to inves­ti­gate these feel­ings, but Zed hasn’t been home to his own fam­i­ly in two years, choos­ing instead to hide out in the States to pur­sue his music career from afar. Only the chance to sup­port anoth­er musi­cian on a Euro­pean tour, and a sep­a­ra­tion from his emo­tion­al­ly dis­tant girl­friend Bina, sends him on a return trip to London.

Back at his par­ents’ home, Zed is forced to re-engage with the life he’s dis­tanced him­self from, ​“the busi­ness of British­ness” (as he him­self raps) in the Pak­istani dias­po­ra. There are plen­ty of sou­venirs of his youth in the house, notably the t‑shirts and aprons bear­ing the logos of his father’s failed busi­ness ventures.

When his father is asked to recall the hor­rors of the jour­ney he made from India to Pak­istan dur­ing the par­ti­tion in 1947, Zed becomes guard­ed, per­haps afraid of what he might learn. A sud­den ill­ness and Zed’s hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion opens this door even fur­ther, with his career on the line and the notion of lega­cy, in many forms, at stake.

Ques­tions of her­itage and his­to­ry, of blood­lines and inde­pen­dence, make Mogul Mowgli a sin­cere and bal­anced work, at its best in quick­fire dream sequences, such as Zed’s visions of the mys­te­ri­ous ​‘Toba Tek Singh’. Direc­tor Bas­sam Tariq beau­ti­ful­ly cap­tures the tex­tures of Zed’s world and his father’s mem­o­ries that infil­trate his new under­stand­ing of his life: the dust, ash­es, talc, spices, crushed flowers.

A few shifts in tone feel occa­sion­al­ly jar­ring, but the film steers away from being too sen­ti­men­tal and finds a mov­ing and invig­o­rat­ing con­clu­sion with Ahmed firm­ly at its thump­ing heart.

Mogul Mowgli is in cin­e­mas from 30 Octo­ber; to expe­ri­ence the world of the film, head to mogul​mowgli​.co​.uk