Bhaag Milkha Bhaag

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013)

भाग मिल्खा भाग

You know him as 'The Flying Sikh'. Now you will see his Real Story.

The true story of the "Flying Sikh" world champion runner and Olympian Milkha Singh who overcame the massacre of his family, civil war during the India-Pakistan partition, and homelessness to become one of India's most iconic athletes.

Date of release
2013-07-12
TMDB
7.5 / 10 (298)
Runtime
3h 6m
Genres
Drama
Director
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: The Race of My Life
  • Filmed in: Delhi
  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 0. Including: Filmfare Award for Best Film

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is a 2013 Indian Hindi-language biographical sports drama film directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, written by lyricist Prasoon Joshi, and produced by Viacom 18 Motion Pictures in association with Rajiv Tandon and editor P.S. Bharathi under the ROMP Pictures banner. Based on the life of Milkha Singh, an Indian athlete and Olympian who was a champion of the Commonwealth Games and two-time 400m champion of the Asian Games, it stars Farhan Akhtar in the title role alongside Art Malik, Divya Dutta, Pavan Malhotra, Yograj Singh, Prakash Raj and Meesha Shafi in supporting roles with Sonam Kapoor in a special appearance.

Production

After the release of Delhi-6 (2009), director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra started developing two projects: a historical love story, Mirza Sahiban, and a biopic of Milkha Singh. He chose the latter as it had developed better. Prasoon Joshi, who co-wrote Delhi-6 with Mehra, started working on the script. Joshi later clarified that the film's title, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (Run Milkha Run) was never actually spoken by Milkha's father.

Growing up in Delhi, Mehra was familiar with anecdotes from the life of Milkha Singh, the ace runner popular as the "Flying Sikh". He used to visit the National Stadium, Delhi for swimming, where Singh also came for his practice. Gradually, he learns details regarding his early life, including how he witnessed his entire family being killed during the Partition and travelled alone to Delhi as a refugee.

For research, he visited Chandigarh several times, where he talked for hours with Singh. Milkha Singh's son, Jeev Milkha Singh, a notable golfer in his own right, arranged his meetings with the family members. Milkha Singh refused a large offer for the film rights to his story and instead charged a token amount of ₹1 (1.0¢ US), as he believed if the film could "inspire our young people and result in India's first Olympic track gold, that would [b…

It took the next two and half years to write the story. According to the director, it is not a sports film, but a film about human spirit.

In 2010, early contenders of the lead role were Abhishek Bachchan and Akshay Kumar. While Bachchan was preferred by Mehra, Kumar was preferred by Milkha Singh himself. First the script went to Akshay Kumar, who declined as he was more interested in doing Once Upon ay Time in Mumbai Dobaara!, but however later regretted the decision for passing the film on. Mehra deferred the final decision on the cast till the final script was completed.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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