3 Idiots

3 Idiots is a 2009 Indian Hindi-language coming-of-age comedy-drama film co-written (with Abhijat Joshi) and directed by Rajkumar Hirani. Starring Aamir Khan, Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, Kareena Kapoor, Boman Irani, and Omi Vaidya, the film follows the friendship of three students at an Indian engineering college and is a satire about the social pressures under an Indian education system. The film is narrated through parallel dramas, one in the present and the other ten years in the past. It also incorporated real Indian inventions, namely those created by Remya Jose, Mohammad Idris, Jahangir Painter, and Sonam Wangchuk.

Produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra under the banner Vinod Chopra Films, 3 Idiots received widespread critical and commercial success upon its release on 25 December 2009. The film was the highest-grossing film in its opening weekend in India, had the highest opening day collections for an Indian film up until that point, and also held the record for the highest net collections in the first week for a Bollywood film. It also became one of the few Indian films at the time to become successful in East Asian markets such as China and Japan, eventually bringing it’s worldwide gross to ₹392 crores ($90 million)— it was the highest-grossing Indian film ever at the time. The film also had a social impact on attitudes to education in India.

The film won six Filmfare Awards including Best Film and three National Film Awards including Best Popular Film. Overseas, it won the Grand Prize at Japan’s Videoyasan Awards while was nominated for Best Outstanding Foreign Language Film at the Japan Academy Awards and Best Foreign Film at China’s Beijing International Film Festival. This film was remade in Tamil as Nanban (2012), which also received critical praise and commercial success. Nanban had a Telugu dubbed version titled Snehitudu. A Mexican remake, 3 idiots, was also released in 2017.