Local Kung Fu

Charlie lives in Guwahati with his uncle, a kung fu teacher, and his cousin Johnny. He has recently moved from Tezpur because his girlfriend Sumi was sent away by her family to keep the couple apart.

He turns up at her house pretending to be Montu, a suitor Sumi had earlier chased off. Her uncle Bhobananda Das, an incorruptible excise inspector, is refusing a local gang a liquor licence for a shop opposite a pre-school. When bribes fail, the gang led by the kung fu enthusiast Dulu threatens his family, and Charlie steps in only to be beaten up.

The film then plays out as a comedy of errors, with Johnny pressured into drinking by his friends, Charlie discovering that those friends are Dulu's brothers, and a masquerade that eventually unravels.

Kenny Basumatary wrote and directed the film, and Durlov Baruah produced. It was a low-budget independent production that found an audience through word of mouth, and was promoted as India's first kung fu film. It launched a series: a spiritual sequel, Local Kung Fu 2, followed on 19 April 2017, and a direct sequel, Local Kung Fu 3, on 5 September 2024. The cast includes Kenny Basumatary, Sangeeta Nair, Tony Basumatary and Utkal Hazowary.

Local Kung Fu was the second Assamese film to be released nationwide, and it went on to become the first part of a series, with sequels in 2017 and 2024.

Marketed as India's first kung fu film, it showed that a self-funded genre comedy from Guwahati could travel beyond Assam.