Dilli Dark Review | A Refreshing Caricature Piercing Racial Prejudices

Dilli Dark (2023) written, directed, and produced by Dibakar Das Roy, emerges as his reverent love letter to theatre, documentary filmmaking, and the unruly ethos of Delhi—a living, breathing entity shaped by an amalgamation of histories, voices, and contradictions. Dilli Dark premiered initially at the 2023 MAMI film festival, and much like the capital itself—is a conglomeration of various genres. It attempts to blend magical realism with satire, serving as a surreal fossil of urban loneliness and otherness, if one were to give it a face. Dilli Dark is deeply invested in experimentation, which makes it a rare delight and refreshingly daring—making both the process of filmmaking and watching the film undeniably fun. After six long years of translating this onto the screen, Das Roy brings forward his love for Razia Sultan’s story through a very dark and audacious twist that unfolds as both caricature and critique.

The film is as rooted in its geography as it is in the intangible identity of a Delhiite. As much as India longs to be secular, progressive, a mosaic of identities, it resists the very grammar of plurality. Delhi lives not just as a city—but as a pattern, an architecture of repetition. Circles going around in circles, concentric and absurd—a metaphor, yes, but also a psychological terrain. The motif is hammered into the narrative, not by accident, but by obsession. It insists you feel the claustrophobia of a city that never quite moves forward, only loops. Dilli Dark does not flinch from this hypocrisy. It doesn’t romanticise Delhi’s diversity; it makes you sit in its discomfort. The capital, in all its metro-card-flashing, smog-breathing, endlessly surveilled infrastructure, is supposed to be a confluence of cultural communities flowing in for work, survival, belonging. And yet, the city maintains its elitism, its guarded ‘Delhi-ness’.

Michael Okeke (Samuel Abiola Robinson), a Nigerian by birth, now settled in Delhi, is on a fractured quest to make sense of this sprawling, mercurial city. He makes countless attempts at blending with the chaos of Delhi markets, memorising the national anthem, conversing with locals, and even learning the shape of its profanities. Yet, beneath his attempts to claim a Delhiite identity, hostility lingers palpably; the city’s veins pulse with deep-seated prejudices. These are not mere figments of paranoia but real, visceral stereotypes—cannibalism, drug dealing, notions of uncleanliness that cling stubbornly to the African diaspora in India. The film does not shy away from admitting that stereotypes, however flawed, reflect a certain slice of reality but Michael strives to rewrite this narrative imposed upon him.

This colonial complex does not merely haunt Michael’s journey; it reverberates through the experiences of many—be it migrants from India’s own states or those who cross continents to call Delhi home. Debu (Shantanu Anam) introduces himself not as a Delhiite but a Kolkata native—a loaded distinction. He attempts to justify his non-vegetarianism to the landlord by stating his Bengali identity, which Michael has no option to. Debu emerges as Michael’s sole ally, as his outsider status mirrors Michael’s own, despite being different in degrees. Citing their shared skin tone as a bridge over an otherwise impassable divide—Debu attempts to forge brotherhood. He reassures Michael by reiterating that he’s not alone, and that, “Dilli mein sabki equally lagi hui hai”, and “Dilli mein kuch bhi hona gaali hai”. Michael, however, sees with piercing clarity that no matter how much he tries, Delhi will never fully accept him—not even in the liminal spaces of imagination, where he meets Neha’s (Saumya Jakhmola) parents talking to him in Yoruba.

Michael works as a delivery boy for a cocaine dealer, believing in his own sacred gospel of the 4 Cs: cellphone, cocaine, cash, and clients. He labels its irony as “people buying white shit from a black ass”. He roams around on Delhi streets wearing a mask—not to hide, but to exist easier. And as the title suggests, the multi-fold Delhi stretches its arms in the dark to cradle what it rejects during the day. There’s a piercing line by Michael that lingers: “Even a police officer pissing beside a drug dealer are just two dudes pissing on the wall when it’s dark outside”.

Mansi, also called “Maa” (Geetika Vidya Ohlyan), is perhaps the most sacred and the most profane offering in this universe. A godwoman fully aware of her fraudulence, yet impossibly devout in her delivery—a cocaine-flecked messiah who knows she’s no saviour. The ashram swells around her, full of disillusioned seekers who exalt her as oracle but demand no truth. She is impossible to look away from. Charming, witty, unbothered by danger, Mansi admires Michael from the moment she sees him. Perhaps she sees in him a similar exile—a man who doesn’t fit and doesn’t apologise.

Mansi’s ashram emerges as a sanctuary where Michael can simply be Kevin, or Michael whichever iteration of self he chooses to embrace. Michael and Mansi’s alliance is quiet, unsentimental. They connect not through performance but through shared camouflage. And the audience is never told clearly, if either of them are conning or being conned, or if this duplicity is simply the cost of being civilised in a city that itself feels fraudulent. The spectacle of Michael darting around in Ravan’s theatrical attire, eliciting gawks from his old neighbors, is both comical and tragic. The ever-present “log kya kahenge” echoes when Debu warns of the scandal it would cause to see a godwoman with an African man, and indeed the neighbors rally to reclaim Mansi, perceiving danger in the breach.

Michael’s obsession with the story of Razia Sultan, relayed to him by Debu, adds a romantic and historical hallucination to his otherwise brutal present. He becomes enamoured by the tale of Jamal-Ud-Din-Yaqut, a man of Nigerian descent who loved Razia Sultan. This echo of ancestry and longing becomes Michael’s mirror. It is no surprise that Indian daily soaps and Bollywood have deeply permeated African popular consciousness over the years. Many who cherish an iconic film like Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995) as much as they cherish a daily soap like Anupama (2020). This film thus, feels like a tender tribute to African viewers—offering Bollywood, or Indian cinema at large, an African hero in the lead role, which Michael himself interrogates the existence of. Delhi won’t offer him identity, so he scripts his own. He casts himself not just as a lover, but as a legend—stepping into a mythic romance where he replaces Dharmendra in a Razia Sultan (1983) of his own making; and finally he does, as Dilli Dark brings him to the forefront of Indian theatres.

There are laughable moments within the film where Michael is made to be a spokesperson of an MBA institute or even made to pose with Mansi for photographs, to show the diversity in her disciples. Yet, Michael becomes a hollow cardboard cut out for diversity rather than being actually included in the society, whether it is having a difficulty getting a work visa or finding a decent home in Delhi. The bankability of the “other” positions the outsider as spectacle, a lens through which India can congratulate itself for its supposed inclusivity, even as the same outsider remains excluded in the intimate, lived-in layers of Indian society. When Michael watches the documentary on the Siddi tribes settled in Gujarat, he glimpses a rare celebration of identity, starkly contrasting with the alienation and caricatured narratives imposed on him.

Much like Shakespeare’s jesters, Das Roy introduces a vagabond character who intermittently punctuates the film with absurdity and clever humour—seemingly excessive, yet purposeful, much like the Fakir with the mirror in Delhi 6 (2009), through whom both the audience and the protagonist are nudged toward introspection. The caricatures of advertising tools in this film, like the product “Fair and Awesome” or even the walls on Mansi’s ashram that promote Nasha Mukti Kendras or Bawaseer clinics, are clever and comical texts. Playing on the lyric “Hum kaale hain to kya hua, dilwale hain”, from an older Bollywood song, there is a peculiar catchiness to Dilli Dark Anthem—written by Das Roy himself and sung by Aaroh—as it speaks to the identity of a Delhiite.

Cinematographer Kartik Parmar’s camera obsessively circles around Michael in moments of deep thought or simply the Sisyphean act of applying for jobs—mirroring Delhi’s dizzying whirl. In a rare moment of clarity, Michael confronts the stark reality: not even Mansi is truly his ally. No one is. Electricity pulses through Dilli Dark not merely as a functional necessity but as the intangible spirit of Delhi itself. The power cut first works against Michael, spoiling his refrigerated food and unleashing his landlord’s wrath; yet, it later shrouds him from the violent eruption of local fury as he becomes the scapegoat for drug trafficking. The city becomes a co-conspirator, aiding his frantic escape from the very Delhi that promised opportunity, but shackled him in alienation. As the film comes to a close, Michael’s escape to join the Afro-descendent Siddi tribe in Gujarat circles back to a profound yearning—the quest for acceptance in a place where the dissonances of Delhi no longer echo so loudly. This feels reminiscent of Delhi 6’s (2009) ending, wherein a similarly enraged mob traps Roshan (Abhishek Bachchan) amidst a communal riot sparked by the “Kala Bandar” (Black Monkey)—a symbol of fear, ignorance, and blind belief. The city offers him a brief respite, a chance for rebirth, much like Michael’s escape in Dilli Dark.

There is an inherent madness woven into Dilli Dark’s fabric—a deliberate, self-aware design where every narrative flaw morphs into a creative choice. The film erupts in theatrical bursts, time-traveling to a recreated 1240 AD Delhi, and venturing through surreal realms that evoke the dizzying, almost hallucinatory experience of inhabiting this sprawling metropolis. Dilli Dark in its limited runtime, commands its place alongside seminal Delhi-centric films such as Oye Lucky Lucky Oye (2008), Khosla Ka Ghosla (2006), Delhi 6 (2009), and Titli (2015) —works that refuse to reduce the city to a romanticised backdrop, instead laying bare its fractured infrastructure, the tenuous grasp on personal freedom, and the daily struggle for survival.

Sakshi Salil Chavan is a documentary filmmaker and an entertainment writer based in Mumbai.