Bryan Singer spent something like $200 million a few years back trying to revive the Superman movie franchise. Shaikh Nasir’s Malegaon ka Superman came somewhat more frugally: about two grand. But every rupee of that modest sum is on the screen. He shoots on a handheld digicam. A “dolly shot” consists of three guys stabilizing him and pushing him forward on a bicycle while he clutches the camera with both hands. And he sure isn’t going to hire a stunt double for Sheikh Shafique, the poor, scrawny bastard he’s cast as the Last Son of Krypton.

Like most of the population of Malegaon — a textile town 175 miles and a world removed from Mumbai, where India’s mainstream film industry cranks out more flicks each hear than Hollywood does — Shafique works in a power loom 14 hours a day, six days out of seven, for a weekly salary of about $25. The opportunity to appear in one of the films the workers flock to on Fridays, “surrender[ing] his consciousness,” as Nasir says, is too good to pass up, even though we see Safique suffer more than a few close calls. You will believe a man can fly, at least until he hits the turf like a sack of brittle bones. Twenty-five years old and illiterate, Shafique is such a sweet-natured, likable presence, you almost feel the blows along with him as he spares no bodily expense to replicate the stunts of a mega-budget, Yankee summer blockbuster.