Hyderabad, June 18 -- Once upon a time in India, completed 24 years on June 15, 2025. In many ways, it was a path-breaking movie which opened the doors for other filmmakers and showed them the possibilities that lay in the subject of sports as a theme for telling absorbing stories through the medium of cinema.

English films emerging from Hollywood had begun to exploit the drama involved in sports contests with films such as the Rocky series by Sylvester Stallone, Escape to Victory which was about Allied prisoners of War escaping from German custody (Stallone, Pele, and several other real-life footballers acted in this one), Bend It Like Beckham as well as many martial arts films featuring Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and others.

In recent yea...