Alia Bhatt a spy, Vicky Kaushal a Pak army man in Meghna Gulzar's Raazi

Mumbai: After the critically acclaimed ‘Talvar,’ Meghna Gulzar is flagging off the screen adaptation of Harinder Sikka’s book, Calling Sehmat, which has Alia Bhatt and Vicky Kaushal in the lead roles.

The film has been renamed to ‘Raazi’ from ‘Sehmat,’ and joining the bandwagon is filmmaker Karan Johar as its producer.

With Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions Alia is also known for experimenting her roles, be it her role in ‘Highway,’ ‘Udta Punjab’ or ‘Dear Zindagi’ and we have seen Vicky portraying variety of roles from playing a boy next door in ‘Masaan’ to a top cop in ‘Raman Raghav 2.0’.

Excited on signing ‘Raazi,’ Vicky Kaushal says, “I'm honoured to be getting an opportunity to work with Meghana Gulzar and also looking forward to working with Alia, who I feel is one of the finest actresses we have at the moment. Actually, the entire team is so talented and especially to be working with Dharma Productions is rewarding for any young actor. I'll soon wrap up Raju Sir's Film and will begin Shooting for Raazi.”

It is a story of a Kashmiri woman, who is married to a Pakistani Army Officer and so Alia and Vicky are training on the dialect and accent as well as the general features of the character. The film is set against the backdrop of the 1971 war and it is a very real drama and thus the feelings expressed have to be absolutely authentic.

Alia will be seen playing a Kashmiri woman working for the Indian intelligence, spying on her husband, a Pak army man, played by Vicky.

The team has joined for workshops for a couple of weeks before they begin shooting at the end of this month. It will be interesting to see this unique pairing of experimental actors together in this movie.