Eight films to wait for in 2016

Different states, vastly different tales, but largely borrowed from real life, eight films that promise to light up the big screen this year.

Raees

It’s been a while since we saw Shah Rukh Khan play anything but a loverboy. In Raees, produced by Farhan Akhtar’s Excel Entertainment and directed by Rahul Dholakia, the actor attempts to veer away from routine. Set in the 1980s, the film about prohibition has Khan play a bootlegger in Gujarat.

Dangal

In an orthodox village of Haryana, former wrestler Mahavir Phogat trained his two daughters to be wrestlers. The girls have since won medals at the Commonwealth Games. Aamir Khan steps into Phogat’s shoes to tell us his story.

Fitoor

A Bollywood adaptation of Charles Dickens’s classic, Great Expectations, Fitoor, set in Kashmir, has Katrina Kaif and Aditya Roy Kapoor in the lead roles. Directed by Abhishek Kapoor, Rekha first shot for Ms Havisham’s character but opted out and was replaced by Tabu.

Raman Raghav

After the debacle that was Bombay Velvet, Anurag Kashyap says his next will mark his return to his earlier style: gritty filmmaking on a shoestring budget. As the subject, the director has chosen Raman Raghav, a psychopath serial killer who preyed mostly on the homeless and would bludgeon them to death. He was caught and sentenced and eventually died in jail. The versatile Nawazuddin Siddiqui has been cast as Raman Raghav.

Udta Punjab

Based on the drug addiction “epidemic” in Punjab, Udta Punjab is Abhishek Chaubey’s third film, after Ishqiya (2010) and Dedh Ishqiya (2014). For the film, he has pulled off a casting coup by bringing together exes Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor along with Alia Bhatt.

Rangoon

A period love story set against the backdrop of the Second World War, this Vishal Bhardwaj film is a romantic drama. After giving Saif Ali Khan his finest role as Langda Tyagi in 2006’s Omkara, Bhardwaj is once again working with the actor in Rangoon. Shahid Kapoor will also be a part of this Casablanca-like drama.

Aligarh

In 2010, Dr Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras, a professor of Marathi at Aligarh Muslim University, was suspended for “gross misconduct” when a video of him having consensual sex with another man was aired by a local channel. Directed by Hansal Mehta and written and edited by Apurva Asrani, Aligarh, based on Siras’s life, is expected to trigger the debate on Section 377.

Jagga Jasoos

After the critical and box-office success of Barfi! (2012), Anurag Basu is teaming up with Ranbir Kapoor again in Jagga Jasoos. This time, however, he has cast the actor’s off-screen girlfriend, Katrina Kaif, opposite him. A romantic comedy, it is about an amateur detective in search of his missing father.