The Marathi - language Dashavatar was a big hit, running for weeks after its theatrical release on September 12. It’s not hard to guess why Subodh Khanolkar’s film resonated with audiences. Dashavatar is among the few movies to use its location in the Konkan not just to serve as a pretty backdrop but also to flag threats to the region’s fragile ecology.

The film is led by acting legend Dilip Prabhavalkar, who is remarkably spry and reliably mischievous at 81. Prabhavalkar plays Babuli Mestri, a veteran practitioner of the Dashavatar performance tradition in a village in the Konkan. Babuli has been enacting the various avatars of the god Vishnu for so long that no performance is complete without his presence.

But Babuli is getting on. His eyesight is failing him. Babuli’s son Madhav

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