Airlift (2016)
Directed by
Raja Krishna Menon
Produced by
Bhushan Kumar
Nikhil Advani
Story by
Raja Krishna Menon
Cast
Akshay Kumar
Nimrat Kaur
Cinematography
Priya Seth
Production company
T-Series
Emmay Entertainment
Cape Of Good Films
Abundantia Entertainment
Release dates
22 January 2016
Country
India
Language
Hindi
Budget
30 crore (USD$4.6 million)
Story
Ranjit Katyal (played by Akshay Kumar), a wealthy and powerful Indian businessman, who has always seen himself as a Kuwaiti, rather than an Indian, realises that he no longer wields any influence on the Iraqis, and that he and his family are in as much danger as anyone else. Ranjit unknowingly becomes the man who all 1,70,000 Indians look up to for getting them out safely from Kuwait. Airlift is the story of Indians stranded in Kuwait during this traumatic time. A story of how they, with the help of Ranjit Katyal, managed to survive the Iraqi invasion, and against all odds travelled a thousand kilometres across the border into Amman, Jordan. From Amman, 1,70,000 Indians were brought home by the largest and the most successful evacuation ever attempted by any country, in the history of the world. Over 59 days, the Indian government systematically flew over 488 Air India commercial flights into a war zone to evacuate all 1,70,000 Indians and safely bring them back home.
Bhushan Kumar of T-Series speaks on producing a film on such genre, “It’s my conviction that the story will be equally appreciated once on celluloid as much as I loved it during narration. The character that Akshay plays is filled with heroism and I am sure he will add to the perfection with this central character role that he essays.”
Airlift is an uplifting and entertaining edge-of-the-seat thriller and is the story of the biggest ever human evacuation in the history of mankind.
Akshay Kumar is having the time of his life working on his new political thriller based on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, titled Airlift. Directed by debutant Raja Krishna Menon, it is again with the same team that gave us the riveting Baby earlier this year.
Says Akshay Kumar, "I'm gravitating towards the scripts I'm enjoying the most at the moment. Airlift is based on an agonizing real life story that happened in the 90s, which will always be remembered as one of the greatest Indian Human Airlift Rescue missions of all time."
Akshay Kumar loves telling the stories about real-life heroes. "It is a story that needs to be told, achieved by men that should never be forgotten, of a real life hero who evacuated 111,000 expat Indians back to India when Saddam Hussain attacked Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War."
Such is Akshay's excitement that, he has learnt Arabic for the film.
