Udaan

Udaan is a 2010 Indian Hindi-language coming-of-age drama film directed by Vikramaditya Motwane in his directorial debut. It was produced by Sanjay Singh, Anurag Kashyap and Ronnie Screwvala under their production companies Anurag Kashyap Films and UTV Spotboy respectively. Written by Motwane and Kashyap, the film stars debutante Rajat Barmecha, Ronit Roy, Aayan Boradia, Ram Kapoor, Manjot Singh and Anand Tiwari, and follows the story of a teen who is forced to live with his oppressive father back home after he is expelled from boarding school. Motwane wrote the script in 2003, but could not find a producer. He co-wrote Kashyap's Dev.D (2009), and Kashyap produced and co-wrote Udaan. The film was set and shot in the industrial town of Jamshedpur. Mahendra J. Shetty was its director of photography, and Dipika Kalra was the editor; Aditya Kanwar was the production designer. Udaan premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, and received a standing ovation; it was the first Indian film represented at Cannes in seven years. The film was also screened at the Giffoni Film Festival and the 2011 Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. Although it was released on 16 July 2010 to critical acclaim, it underperformed at the box-office (grossing 33.5 million from a production budget of 50 million). At the 56th Filmfare Awards, the film received seven awards: Best Screenplay and Best Story (Motwane and Kashyap), Best Cinematography (Mahendra Shetty), Best Background Music (Trivedi), Best Supporting Actor (Male) (Roy), Best Sound Design Award (Kunam Sharma) and the Best Film (Critics) Award. In 2019, Film Companion ranked Roy's performance in their list of 100 greatest performances of the decade. Plot Seventeen-year-old Rohan is expelled from the Bishop Cotton boarding school in Shimla with three of his friends (Vikram, Benoy and Maninder) after they are caught watching a pornographic film outside campus in the middle of the night. Rohan returns home to Jamshedpur, where his stern, abusive, alcoholic father, Bhairav Singh, and his six-year-old half-brother Arjun (whom Rohan hadn't known before) live. Bhairav forces him to run every morning (racing him the last leg) and work at his metalworking factory and attend engineering classes at the local university. Bhairav expresses his disappointment in him by humiliating and abusing him, both verbally and physically. Rohan aspires to be a writer and his uncle, Jimmy, supports his ambition.