The biggest opponent in Best of the Best may not be another dance team. Maya and Anjali have been best friends since childhood. When they join UCLA’s competitive Bollywood-fusion team, the road to a U.S. championship puts that friendship under pressure. Netflix’s new comedy streams September 18.
Maitreyi Ramakrishnan plays Maya and Priyanka Kedia plays Anjali. The two have the same goal when they start, but a college team comes with rehearsals, rivalries and people who each want a different place in the spotlight. The film looks ready to give audiences plenty of dance, yet its real question is whether the friends can keep choosing each other when winning starts to matter.
A dance movie with something personal behind it
Hasan Minhaj, who plays professor Hamza Latif, co-wrote the film with Prashanth Venkataramanujam. Both men have talked about the South Asian college dance teams they knew firsthand. They wanted to show the long practices, creative ambition and sense of community behind performances that can look effortless from the audience.
Minhaj puts the heart of the movie plainly: “Best of the Best is a film about sisterhood, friendship, and self-acceptance.” That promise matters more than a trophy. It tells us Maya and Anjali are not just dancing toward a championship; they are also trying to work out who they want to be once they get there.
Who else is in the cast?
Alongside Ramakrishnan, Kedia and Minhaj, Netflix lists Chaneil Kular, Ankur Rathee, Lilly Singh, Janina Gavankar, Saara Chaudry and Sasha Bhasin among the ensemble. Lena Khan directs. The supporting characters fill out the college world around the two friends, though Netflix has not given every dancer a detailed character description.
Khan has said the script appealed to her because it could deliver both the scale of a dance movie and the intimacy of a friendship story. The official images show those two sides: stage lights and matching costumes in one shot, an ordinary campus classroom in another. The movie has to make both feel like parts of the same experience.
When does Best of the Best arrive?
Netflix has set the premiere for Friday, September 18, 2026. Its title page lists a running time of one hour and 52 minutes and a PG-13 rating in the U.S. The film is a movie, not a series, so the date is for the full feature. Netflix has not revealed the result of Maya and Anjali’s championship run in the official preview.
There is a welcome specificity to this premise. The competition is not merely a backdrop for a generic college comedy. It gives Maya and Anjali a shared passion that can also drive them apart. If the friendship lands, the big dance numbers will have someone worth cheering for at their center.
See the confirmed cast and release information on our Best of the Best movie page.
Quick answers
Best of the Best stars Maitreyi Ramakrishnan as Maya and Priyanka Kedia as Anjali. It premieres on Netflix September 18.
