Reference Films for my A2 movie

1. Film Referencing
1,Highway
Highway is a 2014 Indian drama film written and directed
by Imtiaz Ali and produced by Sajid Nadiadwala. The film
stars Randeep Hooda and Alia Bhatt in the lead roles.The
film narrates the story of a young woman who
develops Stockholm syndrome. 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 andKartika Rane,which was also written and
directed by Imtiaz Ali.

2. Plot
The story begins on the eve of the wedding of Veera
Tripathi (Alia Bhatt), the daughter of a rich business
tycoon. She is at a Fuel Station by the highway with her
fiancé when she is abducted. The gang who kidnaps her
panics when they find out that her father has links in the
government. However, Mahabir Bhati (Randeep Hooda),
one of her abductors, is willing to do whatever it takes to
see this through. They continuously move to different
cities, to avoid being tracked by police. As the days go by,
Veera finds peace and a new-found freedom in her
bondage to the point that she confides in him of her
troubled childhood. Her fear of abduction is taken over by
a sense of freedom.
Sigma the police
forcefully search the
truck, but Veera,
surprisingly even to
herself, hides. Veera
confesses to Mahabir
about her home
where her uncle
molested her, a fact
which was hushed up
by her mother. She
concludes that she
loves the journey and
doesn't want to go back to her life. Eventually, Mahabir
can't help but care for Veera and his anger fades slowly,
and he decides to let her go free. But, Veera refuses and

3. insists on staying with Mahabir. Mahabir takes her back,
and together, they travel; they make a home in a hilltop
house. The following morning, a shootout starts as police
have tracked them down. Mahabir is shot dead on the
spot, while a shocked Veera is returned to her parents.
With the courage and perspective she developed in her
journey, Veera tells her family the truth about her abusive
uncle and her desire of not living with them anymore. She
leaves the house and goes to live in the mountains. She
gets a job in a factory there, buys a house and lives there.
The film ends by Veera looking at the mountains then
looking at the sky and closes her eyes thinking about
Mahabir.
Why I have chosen this movie?
I chose this as my reference film because this film portrays
the protagonist having conflicts with her family, especially
with her mother and father, despite of the fact that they
love her so much. In my film also, the protagonist also
have conflicts with his mother although the love of his
mother regarding him is unconditional. In this movie, the
protagonist, Alia Bhatt, from being a dependent girl of a
family, becomes an independent girl and starts living away
from her family. In my film also, the protagonist when
becomes independent, shifts his house and leaves his old
mother behind.

4. References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_(2014_Hindi_film)
2, Swades
Swades: We, the People, is a 2004 Indian drama
film written, produced and directed by Ashutosh
Gowariker. It stars Shah Rukh Khan and Gayatri Joshi in
her first film. The film received widespread critical acclaim
and a cult following from Indian and other South Asian
audiences around the world. It is widely regarded as one
of the best Bollywood films of the decade and was later
dubbed and released in Tamil under the title Desam.

5. Plot
Mohan Bhargava (Shah Rukh Khan) is a non-resident
Indian working as a project manager at NASA. He had
been a student at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, an Ivy
League school. After the death of his parents and 12 years
in the US, he decides to return to his hometown, Delhi, in
India to find his nanny, Kaveri Amma (Kishori Ballal), with
whom he has lost touch. After visiting the old-age home
where Kaveri Amma resided, he finds out through her
friend that Kaveri Amma was taken to a village Charanpur.
While there, he meets interesting people; there is the
village postmaster, eager to know more about e-mail and
the Internet, while also having a keen hobby of wrestling;
the ex-freedom fighter who teaches history at the local
school and is a lone voice of reason amongst the village
elders; there is a cook who harbors ambitions of opening
a dhaba on a US freeway and sees in Mohan an
opportunity to get a visa.

6. While Mohan soon adapts to life in the village and endears
himself to its people, he develops a cat-and-mouse
romance with his childhood acquaintance Gita (Gayatri
Joshi), who brought Kaveri Amma from the old-age home
to be with her and her brother, Chiku (Master Smit Sheth).
Gradually he encounters some of the harsher aspects of
the village; among them are
poverty, castediscrimination, child marriage, illiteracy, child
labor, a general disregard for education, and apathy to
change. He tries in his own way to bring about some
change,
even
succeeding
to the point
of
dissuading
the village
elders from
moving the
local school
to smaller
and far-
away
premises. In
doing this,
he earns the respect of Gita, who runs the local school.
One day Kaveri Amma sends him to a village called Kodi
to collect dues from a farmer named Haridas who has
rented Gita's land. Along the way, Mohan realizes that the
problems he had seen in the village mirror those faced by
almost all other villages in the country. Haridas, the farmer

7. who owes rent, has no money to feed his own family,
mainly because the villagers would not support his
attempts at a change of occupation from weaving to
farming. Mohan returns empty handed but is full of a new
sensitivity and perspective towards the harsh realities of
rural India. This journey to Kodi and back proves to be the
turning point in Mohan's life, and he comes back with a
resolve to improve the quality of life of the villagers.
He enlists the support of a few hundred men and guides
them through the building of a reservoir beneath
a perennial spring on a nearby hill. Buying turbines and
other equipment with his own money, he sets up a
small hydro-electric power plant that would solve the
problem of irregular electricity and make the village self-
sufficient.
By then, it is time for him to leave as his project at NASA
is nearing its final stage. Kaveri Amma, whom he had
intended to take along with him, refuses to come citing the
difficulty of adapting to a new culture at such a late stage
in her life. Gita, whom he had fallen in love with and who
had fallen in love with him, also refuses to come with him,
wanting to remain in the country and continue running the
school that her parents had founded. He returns alone but
feels a growing sense of responsibility towards his country
and guilt for not being able to do much for the welfare of
its people. He finishes his project at NASA before
resigning and returning to India. The movie ends with
Mohan and the postmaster wrestling for fun. Mohan wins.

8. Why I have chosen this movie?
I have chosen it as my reference film because the film draws
attentiontowards a high level of poverty. I have focused on
poverty in my film as well as the mother was poorthat’s why
she donated her own eye to her son instead of going for an eye
transplant from another patient. Just like Swades, when the
protagonist, Shahrukh Khan comes back to his village,some
people make fun of him while other shows sympathy towards
him as he had lost his parents at a very tender age. In my film
also, some people make fun of the mother while some shows
sympathy towards her Another reason why I’ve taken Swades
as my reference film is because the local villagerstell their
stories in flashbacks and flashbacks will be used in my film too.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swades
3, Raincoat
Raincoat is a 2004
Indian Hindi drama film directed
by Rituparno Ghosh, and
starring Ajay
Devgan and Aishwarya Rai. It tells
the story of two lovers, separated
by destiny, who meet again one

9. day. This encounter allows each to realize the truth about
the lives they are living. It is an adaptation of the short
story The Gift of the Magi (1906) by O Henry and is the
inspiration of Mithaq Kazimi's film, Through Her Eyes.
The film won the National Film Award for Best Feature
Film in Hindi and was nominated for the Crystal Globe for
Best Feature Film at the Karlovy Vary International Film
Festival. Rai also won the Zee Cine Award for Critics'
Choice Best Actress and was nominated for the Filmfare
Best Actress Award.
Plot
Raincoat,is inspired by O. Henry’s “The Gift of The Magi”. The
film narrates the story of two lovers – Manu, a country man of
very little money who lives in a poor villageBhagalpurand
Neeru, to whom he got engaged six years ago. These two lovers
got separated by destiny but meet again one day. Neeru gets
married to another man who is wealthier and moves to
Calcutta. Both of them meet after a long time when Manu
comes over to Calcutta (having lost his job) to ask for money
from his childhoodfriends so that he can start with a new
business. Manu paysa visit to Neeru’s house, where they
discuss their lives –pretending to be very happywith their lives,
which is of course not the reality. Manojplays as a successful
TV serial producer while Neerja makes stories of her grand
lifestyle with servants, chauffeurs, and an ever-touring

10. husband.The raincoat comes to play when Neeru wears it to go
out and buy something to cook for him. The landlord,who
Manojreluctantly let’s in speaks of the real situation of the
household.When the landlordreveals that Neeru and his
husbandare close to being evicted from their house because of
not paying rent, Manojgives the landlordthe 12,000 rupees he
had collected to
pay three months’
rent. Manu leaves
a letter under the
bed sheet
explainingthings.
When Neeru
returns he does not
say anything about
his encounterwith
her landlord.After
some time Manuleaves. Later, when he puts his hand inside
the pocket of his raincoat, he finds a pairof gold bangles that
belonged to Neeru, along with a letter saying that she had a lot
of money and he should have told her about his financial
situation.She had actuallyread a letter that was inside the
raincoat that informed her about Manu’scondition.

11. Why I have chosen this movie?
This movie portrays love, sacrifice, poverty and unemployment.
The film showcased peoplewho are not very privilegedand are
living under some kind of constant pain. It focuses on two
lovers who lie to one another about their circumstances
because they are ashamed to admit the truth to themselves as
they are to admit it to one another. When both the lovers
figure out about each other’s real conditions,they help the
other. The respect and passion both lovers have towards each
other, even after many long years, has been excellently
portrayed here. I’d also be portraying the concept of poverty
and unconditionallove in my film. Like Manuand Neeru, the
protagonists, the mother and her son are miserable in my film
and they often don’t have enough food for both of them. My
film also focuses on love and sacrifice because mother donates
her own eye to her son so he could lead a normal life. The
mother is contendedto see her son eat while she sleeps
hungry. Raincoatcontainsmany flashbacks which tells the past.
SimilarlyI’ll be using flashbacks in my film too.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raincoat_(film)
Made By
Syed Shan Tariq, A2-F