Meghna Gulzar’s Daayra trailer unveiled positions the film as a crime thriller that is less about recreating one headline making case and more about examining how crime, policing, law and public emotion collide. Starring Kareena Kapoor Khan and Prithviraj Sukumaran as police officers on opposing sides of a complicated investigation, the film arrives in theatres on September 18.
Interestingly, Gulzar used the trailer launch to put to rest one of the assumptions that had surrounded the project since its announcement. Online speculation had linked Daayra to the 2019 Hyderabad veterinarian rape and murder case and the subsequent police encounter, but the filmmaker has clarified that the film is inspired by several real events from across India. It is therefore not a retelling of the Hyderabad case or any single incident, but a synthesis of situations that allows the filmmaker to look at larger questions around the justice system.
The trailer makes that distinction important because its central conflict is built around a missing girl, a controversial police encounter and questions surrounding juvenile law. Kareena plays DCP Ajooni Kohli, a police officer who appears committed to the framework of law, while Prithviraj plays DCP Raman Kumar, whose understanding of justice takes him into more difficult territory. Their disagreement gradually becomes the film’s larger argument about whether justice is always synonymous with procedure.
For Gulzar, the appeal appears to lie precisely in that uncertainty. She has described Daayra as an exploration of the grey areas between right and wrong, something that also connects with the social questions she has explored in films such as Talvar and Raazi. “Kareena’s Ajooni is fiercely righteous. Prithviraj as Raman is righteously fierce. As in life, so in Daayra, they are neither black nor white. They are both swirling in a sea of grey,” she has said.
Gulzar has also described the two characters as the film’s “Ying and Yang”. She calls Ajooni “stoic, unreadable” while describing Raman as the “hinge to Kareena’s Ajooni”, carrying what she calls a “caged rage”. The filmmaker has further said that her background as a Sociology student shaped her understanding that society cannot simply be viewed in binaries.
The casting itself adds another trade layer to Daayra. It brings Kareena, one of Hindi cinema’s most recognisable mainstream stars, face to face with Prithviraj, a major Malayalam performer, in their first film together. Gulzar has called getting the two actors together a “dream come true”, making their confrontation as much a casting proposition as a narrative one.
Daayra also marks Gulzar’s third collaboration with Junglee Pictures after Talvar and Raazi, while Pen Studios comes in as the production and distribution partner. With the trailer now establishing the film around a topical conflict between law and moral judgement, the September 18 release will show whether the combination of Gulzar’s subject driven filmmaking and the Kareena-Prithviraj pairing can translate the debate around the film into theatrical curiosity.
