Netflix's Best of the Best is a college dance movie, and if you went to school almost anywhere with a large South Asian student population, you already know the world it is set in. The film, directed by Lena Khan and written by Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam, follows two childhood friends who join UCLA's competitive Bollywood-fusion dance team and find out the national championship is far more cutthroat than they expected. It has been streaming since September 18, and it is one of the few studio films to take this corner of South Asian American life seriously.

What is Best of the Best about?

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, best known for Never Have I Ever, plays Maya, and Priyanka Kedia plays her best friend Anjali. Together they join the UCLA team and are pulled into a competition circuit that tests their friendship. The film, according to Netflix, is about sisterhood, friendship and self-acceptance, told through the lens of college dance.

The supporting cast reads like a roll call of South Asian talent in North America. Minhaj plays Professor Latif. Ankur Rathee plays Ronak, the team's captain. Chaneil Kular, Shreya Navile, Lilly Singh, Janina Gavankar and Nico Greetham are also in the cast, among many others. Minhaj and Venkataramanujam produced through their company 186K Films, with Jonathan Eirich of Rideback.

"This film is about what it means to be seen," Minhaj said, according to Netflix.

The college Bollywood-fusion circuit is real

The film's premise is not invented. Across the United States, South Asian student dance teams train for months and compete in intercollegiate competitions that mix classical Indian dance, Bollywood choreography, hip hop and contemporary styles. Teams fundraise, travel, recruit and build elaborate themed sets. For many South Asian American students, the team is their whole social world in college.

"This college Bollywood-fusion dance circuit is a huge creative outlet," Venkataramanujam said, according to Netflix. That undersells it a little. For a lot of students, it is also where they work out what their heritage means to them on their own terms, away from their parents and in a room full of people negotiating the same thing.

That is why the setting is such good material. A fusion dance team is literally the work of combining two cultures in front of a crowd and getting judged on it.

Ankur Rathee's return

One of the more interesting stories inside the film is Rathee's. As AsAmNews reported, the Indian American actor trained in California at USC and at Princeton, then built his career in Mumbai, with roles in the series Four More Shots Please! and Made in Heaven and the film Thappad. Best of the Best brings him back to American screens in a leading role.

His path is increasingly common. South Asian American actors who found few roles in Hollywood have often gone to India's booming streaming industry and found steady, substantial work. Coming back to lead a Netflix film set at UCLA reverses the usual direction, and it shows how much the two industries now overlap.

Why this film matters for South Asian representation

For years, South Asian characters in American film and television were sidekicks, punchlines or doctors with one line. The last decade changed that, in part through Minhaj himself, Mindy Kaling's Never Have I Ever, which made Ramakrishnan a star, and a wave of creators building stories from the inside.

Best of the Best builds on that by centering an experience specific enough to feel real to people who lived it. It is not about arranged marriage, immigrant parents' disapproval or a culture clash played for laughs. It is about two young women who love to dance and a friendship under pressure, set in a world that happens to be South Asian American.

As we argued about Netflix's Dang!, the fair way to judge representation is by watching what a project actually does. On that measure, a story built on friendship and craft rather than tired tropes is a step in the right direction.

Is Best of the Best worth watching?

If you danced on a college team, or watched friends disappear into practice every night for a semester, this film will feel familiar in the best way. If you have never heard of the circuit, it is a fun, warm entry point. Best of the Best is streaming now on Netflix.