Highway

Highway is a 2014 Indian Hindi-language road drama film written and directed by Imtiaz Ali and produced by Sajid Nadiadwala. The film stars Alia Bhatt and Randeep Hooda. Screened in the Panorama section of the 2014 Berlin International Film Festival, the film released worldwide on 21 February 2014. The film is based on the episode of the same name from the Zee TV anthology series Rishtey, starring Aditya Srivastava and Kartika Rane, which was also written and directed by Imtiaz Ali. It tells the story of a girl (Alia Bhatt) who, for reasons later revealed, discovers freedom after being kidnapped. Upon release, Highway received positive reviews from critics, with high praise directed towards Bhatt's performance, thus proving to be a breakthrough for her. It also emerged as a commercial success at the box office. At the 60th Filmfare Awards, Highway received 9 nominations, including Best Actress (Bhatt) and Best Story (Ali), and won Best Actress (Critics) (Bhatt). Plot Veera Tripathi (Alia Bhatt) is the daughter of Manik Kumar Tripathi, a rich Delhi-based business tycoon. One day before her wedding, she goes on a drive with Vinay - her fiancé whom she does not love - and is abducted from a petrol station off a highway, while Vinay sits in the car convulsed with fear. The gang of abductors start to panic when they find out that her father has links in the government. However, Mahabir Bhati (Randeep Hooda), one of the abductors, is willing to do whatever it takes to see this through. The men continuously move Veera through different cities, to avoid being tracked by police. Eventually, when the police forcefully search the truck, Veera, surprising even herself, hides. She concludes that she loves the journey and doesn't want to go back to her family and old life. As the days go by, Veera finds peace and a new-found freedom, which confuses and frustrates Mahabir. Veera becomes comfortable with her captors, to the point that she confides in Mahabir the horrors of her childhood, when she was sexually abused by her own uncle as a nine-year-old. She views the abduction as a blessing in disguise, since she finally has the chance to experience life and find herself. Slowly, she unravels Mahabir's story in bits and pieces. His father abused both him, when he was a young child, and his mother, who was used as a sex slave by the rich landlords.