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Movie Name: Sitaare Zameen Par
Directed by: R. S. Prasanna
Starring: Aamir Khan, Genelia Deshmukh, Aroush Datta, Gopi Krishnan Varma, Vedant Sharmaa, Naman Misra, Rishi Shahani, Rishabh Jain, Ashish Pendse, Samvit Desai, Simran Mangeshkar, Aayush Bhansali, Dolly Ahluwalia, Gurpal Singh, Brijendra Kala
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Sport
Running Time: 155 Minutes
Release Date: 20 June, 2025
Rating:
Production Companies: Aamir Khan Productions
Budget: ₹- crore
After a DUI, an arrogant basketball coach must train Neurodivergent adults for community service. His initial prejudice fades as his players show him a new perspective on life.
Sitaare Zameen Par: Movie Overview
Sitaare Zameen Par, is an upcoming Indian Hindi-language sports comedy drama film directed by R. S. Prasanna, and produced by Aamir Khan and Aparna Purohit. A sequel to Khan’s 2007 film Taare Zameen Par, it is based on the Spanish film Champions (2018) and stars Aamir Khan and Genelia Deshmukh.
The film was announced in October 2023. Principal photography took place in India over four months before completing in June 2024.
Sitaare Zameen Par is scheduled to release on 20 June 2025.
The original Spanish film Champions (2018) was inspired by the Aderes basketball team in Burjassot (in the province of Valencia), created for with people with intellectual disabilities, that won twelve Spanish championships between 1999 and 2014; and the true story of American basketball coach Ron Jones. In the 1980s, Jones was convicted for driving under the influence of alcohol and was sentenced to perform community service as the head coach of a basketball team for the intellectually disabled. Jones later published the story as B-Ball: the Team that Never Lost a Game (1990), which was adapted into the TV film One Special Victory by Stuart Cooper in 1991.
In October 2023, It was announced that Genelia Deshmukh would star alongside Aamir Khan in Sitaare Zameen Par, which also marks their first collaboration. Principal photography commenced in February 2024. The filming took place in Mumbai, followed by New Delhi before moving on to Vadodara. Filming wrapped in June 2024.
The film’s songs are composed by Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy with lyrics written by Amitabh Bhattacharya. The background score is composed by Ram Sampath. The first single, “Good for Nothing” was released on 22 May 2025. The second single, “Sar Aankhon Pe Mere” was released on 29 May 2025.
Movie Trailer:
Movie Review:
Aamir Khan’s seasonal moral science class
An ideal Aamir Khan film can be both entertaining and edifying. Despite its good intentions, ‘Sitaare Zameen Par’ is just annoying
There is a self-aware moment in Sitaare Zameen Par that nicely parodies the moral science cinema of Aamir Khan. A team of neurodivergent basketball players has won a precious free throw in a losing game. Their coach, Gulshan, can’t stop pep-talking the player about to take the shot. Satbir (Aroush Datta) loses his head and yells out. “Sir, pehle aap chup rahiye,” he thunders, telling Gulshan to shut up. Khan — one of the most didactic superstars India has ever produced — needs to surround himself with more Satbirs.
In his directorial debut, Taare Zameen Par, a landmark film from 2007, Khan played Nikumbh, a sensitive art teacher who mentors a dyslexic child in a boarding school. The audience, too, felt mentored meaningfully by Khan, their hearts and minds broadened by a thoughtful, virtuous star. Khan spiked his hair and dressed up in a clown suit for the role. Yet, every so often, we spotted a halo behind his head.
The halo is smartly hidden from view at the start of Sitaare. Yet, Khan’s contract with the audience has remained unchanged. Billed as a spiritual sequel to Taare Zameen Par, and remade from the 2018 Spanish drama Campeones (Woody Harrelson starred in a 2023 English-language version), Sitaare echoes the first film’s mission: raising awareness about neurodivergence. This it does in the most predictably teachable fashion. There’s hardly a scene that doesn’t yield a lesson, a realisation. An ideal Aamir Khan film can be both entertaining and edifying. But when the balance tilts, it’s just annoying.
We meet Gulshan as a cocksure assistant coach in Delhi. He is imperious, insolent, insufferable. As the story begins, he’s suspended from his job for the minor intemperance of socking his superior in the face. To make things worse, he’s arrested and pulled up in court for drunk driving, getting off with three months of community service. He winds up at a centre for adults with developmental disabilities. The team he meets — a cheery bunch of nine, with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Down Syndrome — is as convinced of his ineptitude as he is of their worthlessness. My favourite is the suave Sharmaji (a charming Rishi Sahani), who takes one look at Gulshan and declares, “Naya coach gadha hai (the new coach is an ass).”
In the court scene, Gulshan uses the word ‘pagal’ (mad) to describe people with intellectual disabilities, raising the hackles of the judge. However, since it’s Aamir Khan playing him — and not Rajkummar Rao or Nawazuddin Siddiqui — we know a change is swiftly around the corner. Because Gulshan is the ostensible idiot in the story, a man of moderate height and an inflated ego, the secondary and tertiary characters have to fill him in, explaining chromosomes and the varying shades of ‘normal.’ “Jo baki logo se alag hote hai, unke liye kisi na kisi ko ladna padta hai,” his mother, played by Dolly Ahluwalia, tells him. Gulshan’s marriage has hit a snag, yet Sunita (Genelia D’Souza) is a constant pillar of support. The setting is ordinary Delhi. Why is everyone behaving so nicely?
Unlike the affecting Ishaan Awasthi, whose isolation from his family formed the emotional crux of the first film, the neurodivergent characters in Sitaare Zameen Par don’t get elaborate backstories or journeys. Instead, sweet, sentimental montages sum up the basic facts of their lives. Only one character, Hargovind (Naman Misra), is granted something resembling an arc. Neurodivergent existence is explained in terms of its utility to mainstream society. Director R.S. Prasanna and writer Divy Nidhi Sharma fight shy of messiness and complexity, serving a blur of happy faces. They must ask themselves: by painting these characters as ungrudging, inspirational figures, are they serving the theme of inclusion or simply perpetuating a positive stereotype?
As actors get older, some of the self-seriousness wears off, and the audience is all the better for it. Despite the frequent digs at his height, Khan isn’t as uproariously funny here as he was in Secret Superstar (2021). Time and again, everything loops back to him. The on-court action is mediated almost entirely from his point of view, and the actor’s famous songs — ‘DK Bose,’ ‘Papa Kehte Hain’ — are yanked into service. Even as Gulshan runs away from responsibility, Khan can’t run away from his: holding the public’s arm and guiding them into the light. “Let me explain,” he says. And the halo reappears.
Sitaare Zameen Par: Movie Songs
Song Title: Sitaare Zameen Par – Title Track
Lyrics: Amitabh Bhattacharya
Music Composer: Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy
Singer(s): Shankar Mahadevan, Siddharth Mahadevan, Divya Kumar
Song Title: Good for Nothing
Lyrics: Amitabh Bhattacharya
Music Composer: Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy
Singer(s): Shankar Mahadevan, Amitabh Bhattacharya
Song Title: Sar Aankhon Pe Mere
Lyrics: Amitabh Bhattacharya
Music Composer: Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy
Singer(s): Arijit Singh, Shariva Parulkar
