This suspense thriller is about a couple from Delhi who are drawn into an incident during a break at a highway motel, which will change their vacation plans into a fight for life. The film is an unusual film genre phenomenon within the context of the bollywood production. Although it is patterned on American violent countrymen-based motion pictures, the film pays attention to social problems peculiar to today’s India.
2015 – 115 min – thriller
language: Hindi – subtitles: Czech, English
directed by: Navdeep Singh
cast: Anushka Sharma, Ravi Beniwal, Siddharth Bharadwaj
The film title refers to the highway going from Delhi to a border town called Fazilka. The main characters Meera (Anushka Sharma) and Arjun (Neil Bhoopalam) come from Delhi, both of them are members of wealthy and westerly-like upper class. However, their journey ends right in the village area of the union state of Haryana, which is situated right next to Delhi, for Meera and Arjun had accidently become unwanted witnesses of a so called honour killing murder. Now they found themselves under threat of dead.
The film follows the American hixploitation subgenre tradition by using specific conventions which profit from the prejudice based on educationally subnormal Southeners and depicts them as barbaric criminals who represent a danger to the ‘civilized‘ visitors coming from the city. NH10 successfully adjusts the foreign genre to the Indian cultural environment and reflects actual problems of the local society which are mostly related to the rising divide between western-like rich citizens and poor villagers who still follow the traditional norms.
The Haryana environment was not chosen by pure accident. There are lots of communities in this union state that are still loyal to the tribal patriarchy model and strict caste rules. This is one of the main reasons why Haryana is known for its notorious high number of honour killing murders. The victims, killed by their close relatives, committed offences and broke the rules of the caste system, usually by maintaining a relationship with a ‘forbidden‘ partner. In this respect NH10 drew inspiration from the shocking and widely mediatized case of Manoj and Babla – a young couple who was kidnapped and brutally murdered by order of the village elderly council in 2007.
NH10 is the first movie to which Anushka Sharma contributed not only as an actress but also as a producer. The film was shot with a low budget and without any big advertising campaign. NH10 received positive feedback from both viewers and critics, which has encouraged the creators to work on a sequel.
Author: Miroslav Libicher
Trailer N.H 10
