Armaan

Armaan (2003)

Love... Ambition... Desire...

Dr. Siddharth Sinha is a dedicated selfless doctor who dreams of building a state-of-the-art hospital with all the modern instruments and amenities for patient care . His foster son Akash shares his dream . Akash falls in love with Neha Mathur , an anaesthetist in the same hospital . In a friend's party , Akash meets Sonia who is a spoilt daughter of a millionaire Gulshan Kapoor . Sonia develops an infatuation for Akash . Gulshan Kapoor proposes to Dr. Siddharth Sinha that he will donate a big sum of money to his hospital , on the condition that Akash marries Sonia . Dr. Siddharth Sinha declines but dies of a heart attack a few days later . Burdened with fulfilling his father's dream , Akash decides to marry Sonia sacrificing his own love . But even after marriage Sonia is jealous of Neha and constantly accuses Akash of infidelity which leaves him in a dilemma , torn between two women .

Date of release
2003-05-16
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (9)
Runtime
2h 38m
Genres
Drama, Romance
Director
Honey Irani

Casting

Interesting facts

Armaan (transl. Desire) is a 2003 Indian Hindi-language medical drama film co-written and directed by Honey Irani. It stars an ensemble cast of Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, Preity Zinta, Gracy Singh, and Randhir Kapoor. The film is set in a hospital and follows the travails of its principal, Dr. Akash, to sustain the institution financially. Meanwhile, a mentally unstable woman named Sonia (Zinta) comes into his life and offers to help by donating to the hospital on the condition that Akash marries her.

Production

In April 2002, the entertainment website Rediff.com reported that Honey Irani would make her debut as the director of a then-untitled film. Having written stories and screenplays for many films, she said she had long aspired for a project she could direct. She wanted to feel how directors executed their ideas by themselves with no intervention from others.

Irani's daughter, Zoya Akhtar, handled the casting for Armaan. When the screenplay was finished, it was announced that Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, Singh, Zinta, and Randhir Kapoor had been chosen for the leads. This marked the first time Amitabh Bachchan and Anil Kapoor had been in a film with a female director. Playing the role of a doctor for the first time, Anil Kapoor admitted the film had given him chances to do many things.

Preity Zinta plays Sonia, the first time she has played an antagonist. Describing herself as an honest and outspoken person, Zinta liked the role, particularly for its "insane" character, because it allowed her to "vent ... all [of her] frustrations". Calling it the best role of her acting career, she commented: "If Sonia didn't like something, she would show it in a sneaky way.

Irani revealed her colleagues called her a "trendsetter" as she was the first female director at the time to direct a big-budget Bollywood film; the total production cost of Armaan was ₹100 million (equivalent to ₹400 million or US$4.2 million in 2026). Ravi Varman worked as the cinematographer, while Yunnus Pathan and Kiran Khanna completed the production design.

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

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