After playing Leela in ‘Lipstick Under My Burkha’ (2017) and Shahana Vasishtha in the web-series ‘Inside Edge’ (2017), audiences were aware that Aahana Kumra leaves no stone unturned when playing new characters. In ‘Khuda Haafiz’ which releases on Disney+ Hotstar on August 14, 2020, she plays Tamena Hamid, an Arab agent.
For this role, she had to learn the right Arabic diction to pronounce certain words correctly and it was not easy for her to perfect this diction. Apart from engaging in extensive reading sessions with director Faruk Kabir, Aahana also received training from a professional. Aahana says, “I had to learn particular sentences. I got signed on a week before the film went on floor. So I was immediately put on diction training and I was trained by Noman, who teaches Arabic at the University of Mumbai. He would come to my home, and I trained for almost three hours for the entire week. He also told me how the Arabs speak and I had to learn to speak Hindi in the Arabi accent. It’s a very difficult language to learn because of certain sounds and how the words are pronounced. So, it took me a while to get a hang of it. I had voice notes from him and I would refer to them for every scene.”
Also starring Vidyut Jammwal, Shivaleeka Oberoi, Annu Kapoor and Shiv Panditt, ‘Khuda Haafiz’ is the story of a young, recently wedded couple from India – Sameer (Vidyut Jammwal) and Nargis (Shivaleeka Oberoi), who decide to go work overseas in search for better career opportunities. Under mysterious and shocking circumstances Nargis goes missing in a foreign land and Sameer, a helpless common man tries everything in his power to bring his wife back safely with him. Shot in the picturesque locales of Uzbekistan and in the by-lanes of Lucknow, the movie perfectly balances romance and action-packed thrill.
