Aditya Dhar is like my brother: Udta Teer maker on film's comparisons with Dhurandhar

Director Aakash Kaushik addressed comparisons between Udta Teer and Aditya Dhar's Dhurandhar. He welcomed the parallels but rejected the reverse Dhurandhar label.

In Short

• Two spy films, Dhurandhar and Udta Teer, explore India-Pakistan espionage from opposite sides
• Directors Aditya Dhar and Aakash A Kaushik are close friends who joked about their films' parallels
• Kaushik appreciates comparisons and respects Dhar's Dhurandhar without feeling defensive

What happens when one spy goes from India to Pakistan and another goes the other way? Apparently, you get two films that audiences cannot stop comparing. While Aditya Dhar's Dhurandhar follows an Indian operative navigating Pakistan's underworld, director Aakash A Kaushik's Udta Teer takes a comic route through the India-Pakistan spy game, with Ayushmann Khurrana playing a Pakistani character. The contrasting approaches have prompted viewers to draw parallels between the two films, with some even calling Kaushik's directorial debut the 'reverse Dhurandhar'.

Speaking exclusively to India Today about the comparisons, Kaushik said the joke between the two filmmakers predated the public conversation. He and Dhar are close friends and were working on their respective spy stories around the same time. In fact, they had been joking about their protagonists travelling in opposite directions long before audiences joined the conversation.

"Aditya is a very dear friend of mine. He's like my brother. We were writing our individual films around the same time. I used to actually joke with him, saying, 'Your guy is going there from here, and my guy is coming here from there.' So, for us, the comparison had existed since then," he said with a smile.

Kaushik is not particularly bothered by audiences placing the two films side by side. In fact, he has nothing but appreciation for Dhar's film and sees no reason to get defensive about the comparisons. "I love Dhurandhar, and I think the comparison is obvious. If there is a spy movie, people will compare it. It's absolutely okay. They are comparing it with my brother's film, so I don't mind that," he said.

But does he agree that Udta Teer is the reverse of Dhurandhar? He dismissed the idea, saying, "Not at all. I understand where the comparison is coming from. But I have never perceived it that way. As I said, because I've known about it from the beginning, I never saw it like that."

Why Kaushik created a fictional agency in Udta Teer?

A spy comedy set against the India-Pakistan backdrop inevitably comes with sensitivities. Kaushik said he was conscious of the need to handle the subject carefully, particularly when it came to portraying Indian intelligence and security agencies. Rather than setting the film within RAW, the team created a fictional organisation called the Counter Terrorism Squad, or CTS. The decision was deliberate: Kaushik wanted the film to find humour in its fictional world without making an actual agency the butt of the joke.

His personal connection with the armed forces also shaped that approach. Although his father is a doctor, Kaushik said much of his father's friend circle belonged to the Army, which meant he spent his childhood in cantonment areas. "My love for the Indian Army and the Indian armed forces is at another level. I was always very sure that I couldn't portray our forces or any agency negatively. We knew that if we handled it tastefully, people would enjoy it," he said, adding that several friends from the armed forces had watched the film and called him to tell him how much they enjoyed it.

For Kaushik, the response to Udta Teer is also proof that a film does not necessarily need to generate a buzz before release to make itself heard afterwards. The project was kept relatively under wraps, and the director knew that its premise might not be fully understood until audiences watched it. However, he remained confident, having seen enough positive reactions during private screenings to trust the film's humour. Now that the film is receiving appreciation, the response has been both satisfying and overwhelming for a filmmaker who spent years developing his directorial debut.

Kaushik on Udta Teer’s delays and eventual release

Getting Udta Teer to theatres, however, was not quite as smooth as Kaushik had hoped. The production faced several delays, including following the death of actor Mukul Dev, while the extensive VFX work also took longer than anticipated. The original plan was to finish the film before Ayushmann moved on to Thamma. However, the additional work pushed the schedule back, and the actor's commitments to the other film eventually became a factor.

For a first-time director, such setbacks could easily have been unnerving. Kaushik, however, said frustration was a more accurate description of how he felt. He did not blame any individual for the delays, choosing instead to accept the circumstances and trust the film's eventual outcome.

"It's not that it was scary, but it was frustrating, of course. But those delays were no one's fault. You can't blame anyone. It is the situation. So you learn to live with it and then say, 'It's okay. Whenever the film arrives, it will do its job.' I always believed that it might arrive late, but it would arrive well. And that's what happened," he said.

- Ends