Apple's new Diwali film has plenty going for it. There's Juhi Chawla. There are Raw Mango textiles, the walls of Tijara Fort and a 90s Bollywood song. But for one viewer, something is missing.
Titled “Shot on iPhone 18 Pro: Celebrating Diwali with ‘Step Into the Light',” the film features Chawla and a group of women performing a dance that mixes Indian steps and music with a modern twist, dressed in Raw Mango's textiles.
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X user (@beastoftraal) called it “visually stunning,” but said there was “something oddly outside-in about it.”
“It celebrates the appearance of India without quite capturing the experience of being Indian,” he wrote. “It plays more like a luxury fashion film than a Diwali ad rooted in how the festival is actually lived.”
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‘Family, Rituals, Food, Noise'
The festival, he argued, is about much more than how it looks. “It's family, rituals, food, noise, neighborhoods, memories, and many small human moments,” he wrote. The film gets India's visual vocabulary right, which he said makes sense for a camera demo, but shows little interest in its “emotional texture.”
The China Comparison
The user set it against Apple's Chinese New Year films, naming ‘Three Minutes' (2018), ‘Daughter' (2020), ‘The Comeback' (2022), ‘Little Garlic' (2024) and ‘I Made a Mixtape for You' (2025). Those, he said, tell stories about Chinese families, relationships and tensions between generations, with the iPhone shown off through the story rather than the other way round.
‘Mixtape', he pointed out, uses similar ingredients: 90s songs, dance and nostalgia. But it follows a young man trying to avoid his family's marriage questions on the way home for the New Year. “Same toolkit, totally opposite result!!” he wrote.
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He didn't blame the director. Several of the China films were made by Western directors, he said, while the Diwali film was directed by an Indian. “The gaze probably comes from the brief.”
“So, China gets 15–20-minute short films. India gets an Instagram reel,” he added, conceding that market size could explain part of the gap.
A Note on the Song
The user also flagged the music. The song, ‘Roop Suhana Lagta Hai', is credited to Anu Malik, but according to him, it is A R Rahman's uncredited ‘Ottagathai Kattiko' from the Tamil original.
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