Ukrainian forces have stalled the Russian offensive in the eastern Donetsk region in recent months and have started to win back small patches of land, according to Ukrainian soldiers and military analysts.

Russia still holds the initiative, and conducts dozens of assaults across the eastern front every day, the soldiers and analysts say. But after more than 15 months on the offensive, Russian brigades have been depleted and Moscow is struggling to replace destroyed equipment, offering limited opportunities that Ukrainian forces are trying to exploit.

“The Russian offensive effort in Donetsk has stalled in recent months due to poor weather, exhaustion among Russian forces, and effective Ukrainian adaptation to the way Russian troops have been fighting,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

While it is too early to say the front has stabilized in Donetsk, he said, the situation has improved as Ukraine finds innovative ways to compensate for its shortage of troops.

Ukrainian soldiers cautioned that they expected the Russians to regroup and intensify offensive efforts to take advantage of the sudden suspension of American military assistance and intelligence sharing, which threatens to undermine the Ukrainian war effort.

The pause in intelligence is expected to be among the topics Ukrainian and American officials will discuss this week at their first high-level in-person meeting since a blowup between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Feb. 28. Mr. Zelensky said the meeting will be held Tuesday in Saudi Arabia and the State Department says Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be part of those talks. (Mr. Zelensky met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, in the seaside city of Jeddah on Monday.)

Western military analysts and U.S. officials believe that the order to hold back equipment is likely to take several months to have a significant impact on the front. But the loss of intelligence is already hurting Ukraine’s ability to strike Russian command centers, logistics hubs and concentrations of troops behind the front lines.

Ukrainian soldiers said the lack of intelligence was especially problematic in the Kursk region of Russia, where Russian and North Korean soldiers are on the offensive and have rapidly advanced. Ukraine considers its hold on Kursk to be crucial to use as leverage in any negotiations to end the war. The soldiers, speaking from the front by telephone on Friday and Saturday, requested anonymity to discuss sensitive operations.

A senior U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said that the pause on sharing intelligence had hurt Ukraine’s ability to detect and attack Russian forces in Kursk and hampered its ability to strike high-value targets.

Keith Kellogg, a retired Army general who is the special U.S. envoy for Ukraine, acknowledged that the move would have a “significant” impact on Ukraine’s battlefield conduct.

Ukraine has proposed an immediate partial truce in air and sea operations and has acknowledged that some territory would remain under Russian occupation. But American officials have said the suspension would stay in effect until the Ukrainians bend to unspecified White House demands.

Many of the war’s hardest fought battles continue to be concentrated along the 260-mile front in the Donbas region, which includes Donetsk.

While Russia made significant gains in the southern part of the Donbas last year, it remains far from capturing the remaining cities and towns that make up the backbone of the Ukrainian defense.

This is a snapshot of where things stand in three hot spots in the region.

The Defense of Pokrovsk

Russian forces advanced in December to within about three miles of Pokrovsk, a city at the center of many of the rail and road lines for the Donbas region.

But well-prepared Ukrainian defenses have prevented a frontal assault, so the Russians have been trying to envelop the city from the south.

As the Russian advance slowed, then stalled, Ukrainian forces have engaged in a series of localized counterattacks to regain advantageous positions.

Maj. Taras, a deputy battalion commander in the 68th Jaeger Brigade, described one operation last month to retake part of Dachenske, a village south of Pokrovsk.

“We stocked up on ammunition, conducted, let’s say, a mini-artillery preparation, identified in which parts of the village the enemy was located, and delivered a massive strike there,” said Major Taras, who like many soldiers asked to be identified by his first name in accordance with military protocol.

Then two infantry assault teams attacked.

The battle lasted about 90 minutes and by the time it was over the Ukrainians controlled about half of the village, a claim supported by combat footage verified by military analysts.

But, Major Taras said, “to fully control and take the entire village, more people and more resources are needed.”

It was indicative of the fighting in general, he said, with Ukrainians trying to exploit Russian weaknesses but limited by their own shortages of troops and firepower.

Col. Oleksii Khilchenko, the commander of the Third Operational Brigade of the National Guard, said Russian forces notably reduced attacks last month after suffering heavy losses. At one point, he said, the Russians were sending injured soldiers on crutches to join assaults. It was not possible to independently confirm the claim.

But it would be a mistake, he cautioned, to underestimate the enemy.

“The Russians are constantly regrouping their forces, replenishing losses and redeploying units from other directions,” he said.

Major Taras said Russian forces were engaged in “detailed reconnaissance of our positions, our rear, and our logistical routes every day” and were “planning, preparing, and looking to launch either a creeping or a sudden offensive.”

Street by Street Fighting in Toretsk

The strategic city of Toretsk has been the scene of furious urban combat for eight months.

Capt. Bohdan Ravlikovskyi, of the 12th Special Forces Brigade Azov, said Ukrainians have found themselves holding positions on the same street or even in the same building as the enemy.

“There have even been cases where the enemy crawls forward with mines strapped to their backs to blow up our positions — crawling under a building, throwing in mines, and detonating them,” he said.

The objective of Russian assaults in Toretsk is the same as it is elsewhere: to penetrate as deeply as possible using motorcycles, civilian vehicles, armored vehicles or on foot. If they can hold the position, they await reinforcements and try to push again.

But in recent days, it is the Ukrainians who have been advancing in parts of Toretsk in localized counterattacks and furious clashes, soldiers said.

The Russian entry into the city in August came at a moment when Ukrainian forces were struggling across the eastern front.

Critical shortages of troops and ammunition — made worse by a six-month delay in American assistance as well as organizational issues — resulted in Russia’s seizing about 1,600 square miles of Ukrainian territory in 2024.

Ukrainian forces remain outmanned and outgunned. But with the assistance of an ever expanding constellation of drones, the heavy losses they are inflicting on Russian forces are taking a growing toll.

The Destroyed Fortress Town: Chasiv Yar

Lt. Mykola, a 37-year-old commander with the Ukrainian 5th Assault Brigade, was first assigned to a defensive position around Chasiv Yar, a vital hilltop town, two years ago.

“We are still holding almost the same lines,” he said.

After the fall of the eastern city of Bakhmut in May of 2023, it took the Russians nearly a year to advance eight miles toward Chasiv Yar. The Russians have released video showing how they have now covered the road to the town with netting to protect their supply line from Ukrainian drone attacks.

Like Toretsk to the south, Chasiv Yar serves as a buffer holding Russian forces back from a direct assault on Kostiantynivka and other cities still under Kyiv’s control in the Donetsk region.

The Russians mounted their first direct assaults on Chasiv Yar in April 2024 and have employed a range of tactics.

Russian warplanes leveled Ukrainian fortifications with powerful guided bombs. They have attacked with armored columns and in small infantry-led assaults. Sometimes they sneak in behind Ukrainian lines using pipelines and tunnels.

Over many months, they have clawed their way into the town and captured much of it. But the soldiers said that large areas are “gray zones,” with neither side in complete control.

Lieutenant Mykola said the fighting was relentless but the enemy was also suffering.

“We see their declining troop quality and quantity, which, fortunately for us, is worsening,” he said.

Eric Schmitt and Liubov Sholudko contributed reporting.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, working to repair his strained relationship with the United States and secure a favorable deal to end the war with Russia, met on Monday with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Zelensky wrote on X that his discussions with Prince Mohammed, the de facto Saudi leader, who has sought to take a central role on the world’s diplomatic stage, were “good” and that he was “grateful” for the crown prince’s “wise perspective on global affairs and support for Ukraine.” Mr. Zelensky added that it was “especially important to hear words of confidence in Ukraine’s future.”

Their meeting came ahead of talks planned for Tuesday between Ukrainian and U.S. officials in the oil-rich Gulf state.

Mr. Zelensky, who traveled to the seaside Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah, wrote that he and the crown prince “had a detailed discussion on the steps and conditions needed to end the war and secure a reliable and lasting peace.”

Mr. Zelensky said he had “specifically emphasized the issue of the release of prisoners and the return of our children, which could become a key step in building trust in diplomatic efforts. A significant part of the discussion was dedicated to the formats of security guarantees.” He did not offer specifics.

Once shunned internationally because of accusations of human rights abuses that he has denied, Prince Mohammed has positioned his country as a middleman in efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Last year, Saudi Arabia played a pivotal role in a complex U.S.-Russia prisoner swap, and President Trump has suggested it could be the site of a possible meeting between him and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Last month, Mr. Zelensky postponed a trip to Saudi Arabia after it hosted an extraordinary meeting between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, in which the two sides sought to reset their relationship and discussed the war in Ukraine, without Mr. Zelensky.

But on Saturday, Mr. Zelensky said on social media that he would visit Saudi Arabia, declaring that he was “determined to do everything to end this war with a just and lasting peace.”

“Realistic proposals are on the table,” he wrote. “The key is to move quickly and effectively.”

Mr. Zelensky said that he would not attend the talks on Tuesday with American officials, but that the Ukrainian delegation would include the country’s foreign and defense ministers, a top military official and his chief of staff.

In the talks with U.S. officials, the Ukrainian delegation intends to raise its recent proposal for an immediate cessation of air and sea strikes.

Ukraine has been careful in framing its proposal as it seeks to smooth over relations with the Trump administration after a dust-up between Mr. Zelensky and the American president last month in the Oval Office. Over the weekend, French and British officials coached the Ukrainian delegation about how to talk with the Americans, a Ukrainian official with the delegation in Jeddah said.

Ukraine wants the truce at sea and in the air, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly of the delegation’s plans and who suggested the offer will be posed as a question.

“We don’t know if the Russians are ready for any steps to peace,” the official said, adding that the Ukrainians would ask if the Americans had insight into Russia’s position on the proposal.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that Mr. Zelensky does not “have the cards” given Russia’s military strength, and has all but demanded that Ukraine accept diplomatic terms set by the United States for a resolution of the war. Still, there are signs that Ukraine’s position on the battlefield is improving: Ukrainian troops have in recent months stalled a Russian offensive and in some places won back small patches of land.

Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s special envoy to the Middle East, has said that Mr. Zelensky’s deferential posture after the blowup in the White House has improved Ukraine’s standing with American officials. Nonetheless, the U.S. has paused military support for Ukraine.

Mr. Zelensky wrote on Saturday that he was “fully committed to constructive dialogue” and that he hoped to “discuss and agree on the necessary decisions and steps” during his visit to Saudi Arabia. Mr. Rubio will be in Jeddah for talks with Ukrainian officials from Monday through Wednesday, according to the U.S. State Department, and met with Prince Mohammed after arriving on Monday evening.

Following that meeting, the State Department said that they had discussed the threats from Houthi militants in Yemen, the promotion of government stability in Syria and the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. Mr. Rubio also “reiterated the United States’ firm commitment that any solution to the situation in Gaza must not include any role for Hamas,” according to Tammy Bruce, a State Department spokeswoman.

Mr. Trump’s position on Russia and Ukraine has sometimes been hard to pin down. On Friday, he said on social media that he was considering significant sanctions on Russia to help force a peace deal on Ukraine. He demanded that the two countries “get to the table right now, before it is too late.”

Hours later, he told reporters at the White House that he felt talks with Russia were going well and that he was “finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine.”

For Prince Mohammed, acting as a mediator in the war is an opportunity to solidify his influence beyond the Middle East. Saudi Arabia has avoided taking sides in the conflict and in August 2023, the kingdom hosted a conference in Jeddah with representatives of more than 40 countries to discuss pathways to peace. Ukraine said those consultations were “fruitful,” but Russia, which had not been invited, was dismissive of the meeting.

Ismaeel Naar and Kaly Soto contributed reporting.

Mark Carney, a former central banker, swept to the leadership of Canada’s Liberal Party on Sunday and will become prime minister at a critical moment for the country, which is facing threats to its economy and sovereignty from President Trump.

Mr. Carney, who has never been elected to public office, was governor of the Bank of Canada during the 2008 global financial crisis and governor of the Bank of England during Brexit. He was also a successful banker in the private sector, amassing a significant personal fortune.

He dominated the Liberals’ leadership race, securing a decisive win. But because the party does not command a majority in Parliament, Mr. Carney will soon have to call a general election, in which the Liberals will face the Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre.

Mr. Carney’s election marks the end of Justin Trudeau’s decade-long tenure as prime minister. Mr. Trudeau’s popularity had soured, with many blaming him for Canada’s burdensome cost of living, soaring housing costs, overstretched health system and other woes.

Trump’s threats loom large.

Mr. Trump’s shadow hung over the festive gathering of Liberal Party faithful in Ottawa for the Sunday leadership election. His on-again-off-again tariffs on Canadian goods are already hurting the economy, and his frequent statements about making Canada the 51st state have angered most of the public.

Mr. Trudeau captured the mood in his emotional farewell speech, just before Mr. Carney’s victory was announced. “This is a nation-defining moment,” he said. “Democracy is not a given. Freedom is not a given. Even Canada is not a given.”

In his own speech, Mr. Carney identified two key antagonists as he prepares to take office and lead his party to elections: Mr. Trump and Mr. Poilievre.

“Donald Trump thinks he can weaken us with his plan to divide and conquer,” Mr. Carney said. “Pierre Poilievre’s plan will leave us divided and ready to be conquered, because a person who worships at the altar of Donald Trump will kneel before him, not stand up to him.”

Carney sees ‘dark days.’

Mr. Carney was swept into the leadership, winning 85.9 percent of the roughly 152,000 votes cast by Liberal Party members.

In contrast to the “sunny ways” Mr. Trudeau promised when he became prime minister in 2015, Mr. Carney pointed to clouds on the horizon, coming from the direction of Washington.

“I know that these are dark days, dark days brought on by a country we can no longer trust,” Mr. Carney said.

Mr. Carney, who is seen as a centrist technocrat, revisited some of his main campaign promises, including the immediate elimination of Mr. Trudeau’s widely criticized carbon tax and the reversal of a capital-gains tax hike. Mr. Carney’s campaign focused mainly on reorienting Canada’s economy, which has been weakened by inflation and low productivity.

“I am a pragmatist above all,” he told party members. “When I see something that’s not working, I will change it.”

Though Mr. Carney has spent much of his career in the public eye as the head of two central banks, in Canada he is a lesser known figure than Chrystia Freeland, the former finance minister who finished a distant second in the Liberal leadership race.

But he will soon be thrust into battle against Mr. Trump, defending Canada against the American president’s caustic criticisms and the various tariffs he has threatened to impose.

Trudeau bids an emotional farewell.

When Mr. Trudeau was elected in 2015, promising to usher Canada into an optimistic era, he became the telegenic face of global progressivism.

On Sunday, in a speech seen as a bookend to his time in power, Mr. Trudeau tried to offer a hopeful message, but he also said soberly that Canada faced an “existential challenge” from its neighbor. He has made clear that he sees Mr. Trump’s threats to annex Canada as deadly serious.

In the face of that challenge, Mr. Trudeau said, “Canadians are showing what it is that makes us Canadians; not by defining ourselves by who we’re not, but by proudly embracing who we are.”

Mr. Trudeau began his remarks with tears in his eyes after an introduction from his daughter, Ella-Grace Trudeau, 16. “My brothers and I have shared our dad with you for the past 12 years,” she said. “Now, we’re taking him back.”

The election’s been transformed.

Mr. Carney, who does not hold a seat in Parliament, is expected to be sworn in as prime minister early this week.

He will soon face off against Mr. Poilievre, a career politician who commanded a double-digit lead over the Liberals in opinion polls just a few months ago.

But Mr. Trump’s bellicosity has upended the race. Mr. Poilievre has been hurt by a perception that he is ideologically aligned with the U.S. president, and surveys show that voters believe Mr. Carney is a better choice to take him on.

Mr. Poilievre, who had been relentlessly accusing Liberals of having “broken” Canada, has now shifted to a “Canada First” message as he seeks to distance himself from Mr. Trump.

Under President Trump’s plan, the United States would govern Gaza and expel its residents. Under the Arab plan, Gaza would be run by Palestinian technocrats within a wider Palestinian state. By one Israeli proposal, Israel would cede some control to Palestinians but block Palestinian statehood. By another, Israel would occupy the entire territory.

Since the opening weeks of the war in Gaza, politicians, diplomats and analysts have made scores of proposals for how it might end, and who should subsequently govern the territory. Those proposals grew in number and relevance after the sealing of a cease-fire in January, increasing the need for clear postwar plans. And when Mr. Trump proposed to forcibly transfer the population later that month, it fueled a push across the Middle East to find an alternative.

The problem? Each plan contains something unacceptable to either Israel or Hamas, or to the Arab countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia who some hope will fund and partially oversee Gaza’s future.

“The devil is in the details, and none of the details in these plans make any sense,” said Thomas R. Nides, a former United States ambassador to Israel. “Israel and Hamas have fundamentally opposed positions, while parts of the Arab plan are unacceptable to Israel, and vice versa. I’m all for people suggesting new ideas, but it is very hard for anyone to find common ground unless the dynamics change significantly.”

The central challenge is that Israel wants a Hamas-free Gaza whereas the group still seeks to retain its military wing, which led the October 2023 attack on Israel that ignited the war.

Mr. Trump’s plan would satisfy many Israelis, but it is unacceptable both to Hamas and to the Arab partners of the United States, who want to avoid a process that international lawyers say would amount to a war crime.

The Arab alternative — which was announced last week in Egypt — would allow Palestinians to stay in Gaza, while transferring power to a technocratic Palestinian government. But it was hazy about how exactly Hamas would be removed from power, and it was conditional on the creation of a Palestinian state, which a majority of Israelis oppose.

The upshot is that, despite the flurry of proposals since January, Israelis and Palestinians are no closer to an agreement about Gaza’s future than they were at the start of the year.

In turn, that raises the risks of renewed war.

The cease-fire agreed to in January was technically meant to last just six weeks, a period that elapsed at the start of March. For now, both sides are maintaining an informal truce while they continue negotiations — mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States — for a formal extension.

But that goal seems distant because Hamas wants Israel to accept a postwar plan before releasing more hostages, whereas Israel wants more hostages released without an agreement over Gaza’s future. While some Israelis could accept any deal that secures the return of 59 hostages still held in Gaza, of which 24 are said to be alive, key members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government would not.

In a sign of the deep divides between the sides, Israel cut off power to a desalination plant in Gaza on Sunday — the last remaining place in the territory that still received Israeli electricity. The move was widely seen as an attempt to pressure Hamas into backing down, and followed Israel’s decision last week to suspend humanitarian supplies to the enclave.

Israeli troops also failed to withdraw from the Egypt-Gaza border over the weekend, breaking a condition of the initial truce.

For now, some officials are attempting to project a sense of momentum.

A Hamas delegation visited Egypt over the weekend to discuss Gaza’s future. An Israeli delegation was set to arrive in Qatar on Monday for further mediation. And on Sunday night, Israeli networks broadcast interviews with Adam Boehler, an American envoy, in which he reported “some progress” from a “baby-steps perspective.”

Mr. Boehler, who has broken with years of U.S. policy to negotiate directly with Hamas, said some of the group’s demands were “relatively reasonable” and that he had “some hope about where this could go.” Mr. Boehler also conceded that any breakthrough was still weeks away.

A senior Hamas official, Mousa Abu Marzouq, said in a recent interview with The New York Times that he was personally open to negotiations about Hamas’s disarmament, a move that he said would increase the chances of a compromise. Israel and the United States have both called for Hamas to disarm — most recently on Monday, when Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Mideast envoy, said the group’s disarmament and exile was a precondition for peace talks.

But the Hamas movement has distanced itself from Mr. Abu Marzouq’s remarks and said they had been taken out of context.

The longer the impasse lasts without any hostages being released, the likelier it is that Israel will return to battle, according to Israeli analysts.

Absent a breakthrough, Israel would either have to accept Hamas’s long-term presence — an outcome that is unacceptable to many ministers in the Israeli government — or return to war to force Hamas’s hand, said Ofer Shelah, a former lawmaker and a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a research group in Tel Aviv.

“Given the current situation, we are on a path leading to an Israeli occupation of Gaza, making Israel responsible for the fate of two million people,” Mr. Shelah said. That would have lasting consequences not only for the Palestinians in Gaza, he said, but also for Israel itself, which would probably get bogged down in a costly war of attrition in order to maintain its control of the territory.

Lia Lapidot, Johnatan Reiss and Amelia Nierenberg contributed reporting.

Nasir Shaikh, the sleeves of his suede jacket rolled up, used his phone camera as a pocket mirror to touch up his hair. Then he stepped onto the red carpet (it was blue, actually) and stood beneath banners dedicated to filmmaking giants like Chaplin, Scorsese and Spielberg.

His own movies, exuberant do-it-yourself productions made with a simple camcorder and a ragtag cast, were about as far from big-budget blockbusters as could be. Yet here he was in Mumbai, the home of Bollywood, celebrated as a cinematic dreamer, attending the opening of a film based on his life.

He put one foot forward, tucked a thumb into his jeans pocket and smiled for the cameras.

“Here, sir, here!” the photographers shouted. “Nasir, sir! Nasir, sir!”

Three decades ago, Mr. Shaikh was an attendant in his family’s “video parlor,” as the dingy little halls that showed pirated and unlicensed movies were called. He had an idea: Why couldn’t Malegaon, his small city of textile mills less than 200 miles from Mumbai, have a film industry of its own?

His formula for “Mollywood” was shoestring ingenious. He and his friends would recreate popular movies but change them enough to avoid copyright troubles. Since there was already so much sadness in his blighted city, every film would be a comedy. Loom workers and restaurant waiters would play heroes and villains in plots that felt close to home, speaking the dialogue of their own streets.

The VHS camera Mr. Shaikh, now 52, used to make his early movies was also used to record weddings. Costumes came from thrift stores. Actors were friends who got no pay, though Mr. Shaikh tried to find substitutes for their shifts at the mill or the restaurant.

For a spoof of “Superman,” Mr. Shaikh cast a scrawny textile worker as the hero. At one turn, Malegaon’s Man of Steel fights a local tobacco don who is ruining people’s health; at another he dives into a canal to save children. (It mattered little for the edit that in real life he could not swim.)

This Superman could fly, by tying him horizontally to a pole extending from a moving wagon, with an assistant flapping his cape to simulate wind, or by shooting him in front of a green screen that was a sheet hung from the side of a truck. This Superman could lip-sync and dance with the heroine in a field of yellow flowers.

“Why not?” was Mr. Shaikh’s philosophy. “Why not?” was his attitude.

His productions tapped into something universal: the dream of something more in a place where the routine is stifling and any mobility is out of reach.

Mr. Shaikh’s entry into moviemaking — a daunting endeavor in the era before smartphones and easy digital creation — was in part a solution to a police crackdown on piracy that left the city’s video parlors struggling for content.

His movies, most of them parodies of Bollywood hits, became wildly successful in Malegaon. When his first film ran in the parlors, it brought in four times the few hundred dollars in borrowed money that he and his friends had spent to make it.

“For two months, continuously, the film ran ‘house full’ — three showings a day,” Mr. Shaikh said. National news channels rushed to the city to interview him.

Varun Grover, who wrote the screenplay for the new movie about Mr. Shaikh, “Superboys of Malegaon,” said that most children in India grew up wanting to become either a cricket player or a movie star, even though the odds of either were impossibly small.

The story of Malegaon “is not just inspiring for those who want to come to cinema, but for any person who dreams at night but moves on from it in the morning,” Mr. Grover said. “They turned their nights’ dreams into their days’ reality.”

For his first project, Mr. Shaikh chose to parody the smash-hit film “Sholay,” from the “angry young man” era of Bollywood in the 1970s and 1980s, his formative years.

To sidestep copyright issues, character names were tweaked just enough. Gabbar Singh, the villain from “Sholay” and one of the most recognizable characters of Indian cinema, became Rubber Singh. Basanti, the heroine he kidnaps, became Basmati.

For actors to play them, he would look for some resemblance — in height, or eyes, or voice at least.

“We couldn’t find the original heroes in these parts,” Mr. Shaikh said. “Duplicates would do.”

In one of the most famous scenes of “Sholay,” Gabbar Singh’s thugs, on horseback, ambush a train carrying the movie’s protagonists. There was no way Mr. Shaikh could afford horses, or a train. So his heroes made do with a bus. And Rubber Singh’s thugs? “I said, ‘Let’s do one thing — we put the thugs on bicycles, all the thugs on bicycles,” Mr. Shaikh recalled.

But as he achieved success, he found — as many do in India — a bureaucracy lying in wait. After his initial films, the police would not allow screenings unless Mr. Shaikh obtained certificates from the censor board. To get approval for one movie, he had to travel back and forth repeatedly to Mumbai for a whole year.

The industry was also changing: Video parlors were shutting down with the rise of multiplex cinemas and online streaming.

Eventually, Mr. Shaikh moved on from making movies. His family’s parlor is now a clothing store.

But his legend persisted because of a 2008 documentary about the making of Malegaon’s “Superman.”

At a film festival in New Delhi over a decade ago, Mr. Shaikh was approached by Zoya Akhtar, a filmmaker whose father was a co-writer of many major films of the angry young man era, including “Sholay.” She wanted to produce a biopic.

“I know who you are,” Mr. Shaikh told her. “I have copied all of your father’s films.”

The decade it took to bring the biopic to the screen tested Mr. Shaikh’s patience. But he stuck to the deal partly because of how full circle it felt.

“It’s all quite meta,” said Adarsh Gourav, the actor who plays Mr. Shaikh.

Mr. Gourav grew up in a place not unlike Malegaon. He remembers his first experiences at the only family cinema in Jamshedpur, his hometown. He would be on the shoulders of his older brother among the crowd outside the hall, waiting for the shutters to open.

“There’s like this metal bar, which looks kind of like a prison, and people are like rattling the prison, like basically screaming at the guards to open the gate before the show,” he recalled. “And as soon as the gates are opened, everybody just runs inside like their life depends on it.”

Reema Kagti, the biopic’s director, who grew up in a small town in northeastern India, said the passion of the Malegaon bunch allowed her to explore fundamental questions about what cinema means to places where there is little else.

“This film needed to encapsulate a lot of things, starting from the magic of cinema. Why do we go to the cinema? Why do we need cinema?” Ms. Kagti said. “Why do we need to see ourselves represented in art?”

Much has changed in Malegaon since Mr. Shaikh’s moviemaking days. But the passion for cinema, and the escape it provides, remains. In at least one busy alley, even the old video parlors are still operating.

On a recent evening, men — and only men — trickled in. (Malegaon is a deeply patriarchal place, a fact reflected, too, in Mr. Shaikh’s productions.) In the parlors, the men found respite from 12 hours of jarring mechanical sounds at the loom mills. For 30 cents, they could lean back for a couple of hours, light a cigarette and be carried away.

“There is nothing else in these parts — just work, work and work,” said Shabaz Attar, 25, who stops by the parlors occasionally.

The large posters dotting the alley were time capsules: dramatic collages of bloody and bruised faces, with hand-painted signs listing the showtimes and promising that the “double action” was worth the money.

On one screen was a Hindi-dubbed version of the 2014 Hollywood film “Lucy,” a complicated metamorphosis story starring Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman. (“Strange film,” one older man muttered to his companion as they exited.) In another hall was a 1995 Hindi film called “Jallaad,” about a police officer, played by Mithun Chakraborty, trying to learn the truth about his parents.

“I bet even Mithun has forgotten that he did a film like this,” said Raes Dilawar, who runs the parlors. “But we keep it alive here.”

His method for deciding which films to screen?

“Whatever my heart desires,” he said with a smile. “If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, so what?”

Last month, as he was promoting the biopic, Mr. Gourav returned to Malegaon, where he had spent weeks working to understand the world and the passion of Mr. Shaikh, the man he would play onscreen.

Star and subject made their way around town. Whenever Mr. Gourav’s traveling makeup crew stepped in to fix his hair or touch up his forehead, Mr. Shaikh stepped away, pulled out his phone camera and fixed his own hair. He still thinks in frames, light and angle.

Their last stop was Mr. Shaikh’s home: a small apartment with an open-roof courtyard above a row of shops on a crowded street. In anticipation of Mr. Gourav’s visit, Mr. Shaikh had gone out in the morning and bought plastic flowers for decoration.

As the sunset call to prayer echoed around Malegaon, the uniformed bodyguards who had come with Mr. Gourav from Mumbai tried to control the small crowd outside the building. One by one, Mr. Shaikh ushered visitors to his rooftop for a photo with the star.

These days, Mr. Shaikh is somewhere between lapping up the recognition for his work and thinking ahead to the projects that could be next, from YouTube shows to films for the big screen. He’s reflective yet fidgety, like a boxer in unsure retirement.

But first, he wants to set up an electronics shop downstairs for his sons, 20-year-old twins who are finishing their studies.

“Then, with a free mind, I can come back to this,” he said.

The Kurdish-led militia that controls northeastern Syria agreed on Monday to merge with the country’s new government, marking a major breakthrough for Damascus in its efforts to unify a country still wrestling with violent turmoil.

The agreement, announced by the office of Syria’s presidency and signed by both parties, stipulated that the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces would integrate “all civil and military institutions” into the new Syrian state by the end of the year, including its prized oil and gas fields.

The deal also called for the S.D.F. to help Damascus combat remnants of the Assad regime, and outlined “the rights of all Syrians to representation and participation in the political process,” amid pledges by Syria’s new leadership to form an inclusive government after years of sectarian strife.

The timing of the agreement, which came amid violent clashes in Syria’s coastal region that have left more than 1,300 people dead, signaled a moment of reprieve for Syria’s new interim president, Ahmed al-Shara.

Since the rebel coalition headed by Mr. al-Shara toppled the dictator Bashar al-Assad in December, the new government has sought to unify the complex web of rebel groups operating across Syria — the most powerful of them being the Kurdish-led forces in the oil-rich northeast. However, the security situation has remained unstable, and the Kurdish militia has been among the most challenging groups to bring under the new government’s fold.

Syria’s new government has ordered all armed groups in the country to dissolve, and in recent weeks, several prominent militias have agreed to work with the new authorities, but it remains unclear whether all those militias have yet fully integrated into a single national army under Mr. al-Shara’s authority.

There remains skepticism about the new leadership’s sweeping promises to create an inclusive government. As a rebel leader, Mr. al-Shara commanded an armed group once allied with Al Qaeda, and skeptics question whether he has given up his former hard-line jihadist views.

For years, the Kurdish-led militia has been the main U.S. partner in the fight in Syria against the Islamic State, and it made hard-fought territorial gains amid the country’s civil war, to the extent that it now administers a de facto state in Syria’s northeast.

The group has long sought to position itself as the protectors of Syrian Kurds, who make up about 10 percent of the country’s population. It also provides security at detention camps housing thousands of Islamic State members and their families.

But amid mounting uncertainty over Washington’s role in the region, experts said Kurdish-led forces likely recognized their negotiating position was eroding. American support for the Kurdish militia has been crucial to its finances, but President Trump has not yet committed to continuing to support the group on which the U.S. spent about $186 million in 2024.

Despite the breakthrough on Monday, there were some questions that were left unanswered.

For one, it remained unclear whether the S.D.F. would be allowed to operate as a distinct military bloc within Syria’s armed forces, a sticking point in recent negotiations that the government has previously rejected. It was also unclear how exactly the call for “a cease-fire on all Syrian territories” would be carried out as stipulated in the agreement.

Even on Monday, fighting continued to rage in the northeast between Kurdish-led forces and armed groups backed by Turkey, a close ally and backer of the new government in Damascus.

Turkey has long viewed the S.D.F. as an extension of Kurdish separatist insurgents within Turkey who have fought the Turkish state for four decades, but who recently announced that they would give up that fight. Amid dramatic changes in Syria’s political landscape, many Kurds have grown unnerved at the prospect of ending up worse off under a government supported by their longtime foe, Turkey.

But as soon as news of the agreement broke, people in northeast Syria gathered in the streets, shooting into the air in celebration. Especially relieved — and excited about the deal — were Arabs in the Kurdish-led region who have worried for months that their area might come under attack not only from Turkey and its proxies, but also from the central government.

“I am very happy because of the agreement between Damascus and the S.D.F., but we want to be sure Damascus guarantees our rights,” said Faisal Ahmed, 40, an Arab who sat drinking tea in the northeastern city of Qamishli.

Like many who live in northeast Syria and were happy about the news, he said the lack of clarity about the specifics left him uncertain about who would keep the area safe from attacks by Turkey.

“If Damascus is serious about becoming friends, then they should stop the Turkish groups from attacking us,” he said.

Naleen Mohammed, 35, a Kurd, said she welcomed the announcement, particularly now that unrest was enveloping Syria’s coastal region, the heartland of the country’s Alawites, another minority group. Alawites played a leading role in the Assad regime and have feared retribution since it fell.

“It is very good to have an agreement with Damascus — much better than fighting with them,” she said. “We can see what is happening in Latakia with the Alawites, they are killing people and we don’t want that to happen in our area.”

Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting.