Those crew members who have seen Kartik Aaryan at work for Shimit Amin’s Captain India, predict another National award for the Chandu Champion actor.
The recent celebrations on the film’s sets were to honor his Best Actor win for Chandu Champion. Kartik Aaryan won the Best Actor award at the 72nd National Film Awards for his role as Paralympic gold medalist Murlikant Petkar in the 2024 film Chandu Champion. The ceremony took place on September 22, 2026, in Gujarat, where President Droupadi Murmu conferred the honor.
Following the ceremony, Kartik returned to London to resume shooting for his upcoming thriller drama Captain India. The film’s cast and crew threw a surprise cake-cutting celebration on set to welcome him back and celebrate his prestigious National Award win for Chandu Champion.
Directed by Shimit Amin, Captain India is scheduled for a theatrical release during the Independence Day weekend in 2027.
The social media posts from the production team simply cheered having a “National Award-winning actor on board” for their ongoing shooting.
Captain India is inspired by real events and follows one of India’s most successful, high-stakes human evacuation rescue missions from a war-torn country. Kartik Aaryan steps into a challenging new territory as a pilot leading the mission, demanding both intense physical action and emotional depth.
Shimit Amin’s Captain India will feature Kartik Aaryan as a real-life pilot on a dangerous rescue mission. For authenticity, Kartik is taking flying lessons . The film is heavily inspired by Operation Raahat, the real-life 2015 military and civilian evacuation mission conducted in Yemen. While the filmmakers’ official synopsis generically phrases it as an “evacuation mission from a war-torn country” to maintain a fictionalised cinematic narrative, specific details trace the inspiration back to Yemen.
In 2015, Yemen descended into an intense civil war, causing a massive humanitarian crisis and trapping thousands of foreign nationals. In real life, India successfully evacuated over 4,600 Indian citizens along with nearly 1,000 citizens from 41 other countries out of Yemen using a coordinated effort involving Air India commercial pilots, the Indian Air Force, and the India.
While originally announced with Hansal Mehta in 2021, the film is now being directed by Shimit Amin. This marks his highly anticipated return to feature-film direction. Principal photography began in London on September 1, 2026. The London schedule is locked to run through the end of October. Additional key sequences are slated to be shot in Morocco.
