Aditya Dhar (born 12 March 1983) is an Indian film director, screenwriter, and producer best known for his debut feature Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019), a military action thriller depicting the Indian Army's cross-border operations in response to the 2016 Uri attack.[1][2]
Dhar's directorial debut earned widespread acclaim for its portrayal of national security operations and achieved substantial box office success, leading to his recognition with the National Film Award for Best Director and the Filmfare Award for Best Debut Director.[3][4]
Subsequently, he expanded into production with B62 Studios, co-writing and producing the political action film Article 370 (2024), which addressed themes of regional autonomy and security in Jammu and Kashmir, and directed the spy action thriller Dhurandhar (2025), released on 5 December 2025 to commercial and critical success.[5][6]
Early life
Background and education
Aditya Dhar was born on 12 March 1983 in New Delhi, India, to a Kashmiri Pandit family displaced by terrorism in the Kashmir Valley, an experience that fostered his early sense of patriotism and interest in military affairs.[7][8] His mother, Dr. Suneeta Dhar, serves as Dean and Head of the Faculty of Music and Fine Arts at a university, while his brother is named Lokesh Dhar.[7] As a child, Dhar frequented the Army club in Delhi with friends, where interactions with former officers introduced him to motivational phrases like "How's the josh?", later echoed in his work.[9]Dhar completed his early schooling in New Delhi and graduated from Delhi University, harboring aspirations to join the Indian Army influenced by his family's encounters with militancy.[8] Lacking formal military entry, he channeled his inclinations through creative outlets, joining the Delhi Music Theatre group for nearly two decades, where he honed skills in writing and performance that presaged his screenwriting pursuits.[10] This theatrical foundation, combined with personal exposure to themes of national security, shaped his transition toward narrative storytelling centered on defense and resilience, though without specialized film education.[11]
Career
Early industry roles
Aditya Dhar entered the Bollywood industry in 2006 after relocating to Mumbai, initially taking on roles as an assistant director to build foundational experience in film production.[12] His early involvement included contributions to Kabul Express (2006), an adventure thriller directed by Kabir Khan, where he provided lyrics for the track "Kabul Fiza" amid the film's tense narrative of journalists navigating post-Taliban Afghanistan.[13] This period exposed him to logistical challenges of location shooting and high-tension storytelling, honing skills in coordinating action sequences under resource constraints.[12]Dhar transitioned into writing contributions, penning dialogues for Aakrosh (2010), a Priyadarshan-directed investigative drama centered on caste violence and police inaction in Bihar, which emphasized gritty realism and procedural elements.[14] He further developed his screenplay expertise as a co-writer on Tezz (2012), another Priyadarshan action thriller featuring a high-speed train bomb plot with stars like Ajay Devgn and Anil Kapoor, focusing on themes of revenge and counter-terrorism urgency.[15] These projects immersed him in crafting taut, plot-driven scripts amid Bollywood's fast-paced, commercial demands, prioritizing narrative momentum over spectacle.[14]Over the subsequent years leading to his directorial debut, Dhar maintained a low-profile persistence in a highly competitive industry, selectively engaging in substantive behind-the-scenes roles rather than pursuing high-visibility glamour positions.[12] This phase, spanning roughly a decade, allowed him to refine techniques in action choreography and thematic depth, particularly in stories involving security threats and national resilience, without credited on-screen prominence.[14]
Directorial debut: Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019)
Aditya Dhar's directorial debut, Uri: The Surgical Strike, originated in the aftermath of the September 18, 2016, militant attack on the Indian Army base in Uri, Jammu and Kashmir, which resulted in the deaths of 19 soldiers. Initially preparing a different project featuring Pakistani actor Fawad Khan, Dhar shifted focus to chronicle the Indian Army's retaliatory cross-border surgical strikes conducted on September 29, 2016, across the Line of Control targeting terrorist launch pads.[16][17] He aimed to depict the operational necessity and execution of these strikes, drawing from declassified military accounts and emphasizing the Army's precision response to the provocation.[18]To ensure empirical accuracy, Dhar conducted extensive consultations with Indian Army personnel, including special forces commandos involved in similar operations, which informed the film's portrayal of tactical planning, infiltration, and engagement sequences. While the narrative employs fictionalized characters and composite events for dramatic coherence, these interactions validated key procedural elements, such as night-vision equipment usage and heliborne insertions, countering subsequent assertions of exaggeration by grounding depictions in verifiable military practices.[19] The production prioritized realism over cinematic embellishment, with training regimens for actors mirroring soldier conditioning to authentically convey valor without reliance on stereotypical heroism.Casting proved contentious, as Dhar selected Vicky Kaushal for the lead role of Major Vihaan Shergill despite industry skepticism labeling it a "mistake" due to Kaushal's then-perceived lanky physique unsuitable for a solo action hero in a war film. This "anti-casting" choice facilitated a grounded representation of an everyman officer's resilience, diverging from conventional Bollywood archetypes and contributing to the character's relatable intensity.[20][21]Released on January 11, 2019, with a budget of approximately ₹25 crore, the film achieved substantial box office success, netting ₹244 crore in India alone, reflecting strong audience resonance with its fact-based narrative amid critiques from elite circles dismissing it as propagandistic.[22][23] This triumph underscored Dhar's ability to translate real military causality into compelling cinema, prioritizing operational fidelity over narrative concessions.[17]
Production and writing: Article 370 (2024)
Aditya Dhar served as co-writer and producer for Article 370 (2024), a political action thriller directed by Aditya Suhas Jambhale.[24][25] He co-wrote the screenplay alongside Jambhale and Arjun Dhawan, focusing on the intelligence operations and security challenges in Jammu and Kashmir that culminated in the Indian government's abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019, which revoked the region's special autonomous status under the Indian Constitution.[26][27] The script draws from documented events, including the 2016 encounter of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani and subsequent escalations in militancy, portraying the efforts of security forces to dismantle terrorist networks and proxy infrastructures allegedly supported by Pakistan-based groups.[28]Produced under Dhar's B62 Studios banner in collaboration with Jio Studios and Abhishek Agarwal Arts, the film features Yami Gautam in the lead role as an National Investigation Agency officer tasked with counter-terrorism missions.[25][29] Dhar's writing emphasizes the causal links between Article 370's provisions—enacted in 1949 to integrate the princely state—and persistent separatism, infiltration, and radicalization, arguing through narrative that its revocation enabled direct administrative integration and reduced terror financing channels.[30][31] Released on February 23, 2024, amid heightened national discourse on security ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the production avoided overt political endorsements, with Dhar stating the government required no cinematic support for electoral success.[29][32]The film's commercial performance validated its thematic focus on nationalist security narratives, grossing over ₹100.30 crore worldwide within 21 days, marking it the fourth Bollywood release of 2024 to achieve that milestone and securing super-hit status with approximately ₹76 crore net in India.[33][34] This success stemmed from audience alignment with depictions of verifiable counter-insurgency operations, including intelligence-led strikes that mirrored real post-2019 reductions in terror incidents by over 50% in the region, as per government data, though critics from certain outlets labeled it propagandistic for aligning with official policy outcomes.[35][36] Dhar opted not to direct, citing his personal ties to the affected community as a factor in delegating to Jambhale for objective handling of sensitive material.[25]
Other projects and ventures
In 2021, Aditya Dhar announced The Immortal Ashwatthama, a mythological superhero film starring Vicky Kaushal in the titular role, envisioned as an epic adaptation drawing from the Mahabharata with extensive VFX requirements to depict the character's immortality and battles.[37] The project aimed to pioneer large-scale Indian mythology on screen but was shelved primarily due to escalating production costs, particularly for visual effects, which Dhar stated exceeded what was viable for Indian cinema at the time, with the vision deemed "too big" for then-current market readiness.[38][39] This undertaking underscored Dhar's ambition to tackle high-budget genres like mythology, though financial constraints highlighted risks in scaling such spectacles domestically without proven audience demand.Dhar expanded into producing diverse genres, including the romantic action comedy Dhoom Dhaam (2025), directed by Rishab Seth and co-written by Dhar, featuring Yami Gautam and Pratik Gandhi as an unlikely couple entangled in post-wedding chaos involving goons and police.[40] Originally conceived as Raat Baaki around 2016 with Katrina Kaif and Fawad Khan in lead roles, the script evolved over years before its release on Netflix on February 14, 2025, marking a departure from Dhar's prior patriotic narratives toward lighter, ensemble-driven entertainment.[41][42]Dhar's directorial Dhurandhar (released December 5, 2025), which achieved commercial success by grossing nearly ₹200 crore net in India in its first week,[43] reunites him with Ranveer Singh in a spy action thriller ensemble including Sanjay Dutt, Akshaye Khanna, R. Madhavan, and Arjun Rampal, inspired by real-life events involving Indian intelligence operations and themes of national security.[44] The film's first look, unveiled on July 6, 2025, emphasizes high-stakes action and resilience, reflecting Dhar's preference for content rooted in verifiable historical or contemporary challenges over conventional Bollywood tropes, while navigating budget risks in genre films with patriotic undertones. This selective approach post-Uri prioritizes projects with potential for substantive storytelling, as evidenced by Dhar's comments on aligning ambitions with evolving industry capabilities.[45] The film's success led to the announcement of a sequel, Dhurandhar 2, scheduled for release on March 19, 2026, revealed at the end of the film.[46]
B62 Studios
Establishment and key productions
B62 Studios was co-founded by filmmaker Aditya Dhar and his brother Lokesh Dhar, a film marketing executive, in 2020, with the company formally incorporated on April 6 in Mumbai.[47] The banner derives its name from the brothers' childhood address, B-62, in Delhi's Lajpat Nagar neighborhood.[25] Established in the wake of the 2019 box-office success of Uri: The Surgical Strike, which Dhar directed, the studio enables independent production oversight, allowing for directorial decisions unmediated by larger studio hierarchies that might dilute focus on event-driven narratives.[48]The studio's inaugural major release, Article 370 (2024), centers on the Indian government's revocation of Jammu and Kashmir's special autonomous status under Article 370 of the Constitution in August 2019, presenting the policy's implementation through operational and administrative lenses.[25] Produced in collaboration with Jio Studios, the film generated worldwide box-office revenue of $10.2 million against a $2.4 million budget, underscoring viability for mid-scale projects rooted in documented policy shifts.[25] Dhar emphasized a commitment to neutral viewpoints, noting that external production involvement could have "blurred" the portrayal's clarity.[25]B62 Studios prioritizes financing films tied to verifiable national events in security and governance domains, such as intelligence-led actions, while cultivating directors for grounded genres over formulaic commercial tropes.[25] Its slate includes Dhurandhar (scheduled for December 2025), drawing from real intelligence precedents, and extends to genre explorations like supernatural thrillers set in conflict zones, with an eye toward international co-productions in East Asia to broaden empirical storytelling reach.[25] Lokesh Dhar articulated the ethos: producing content that personally resonates and aims for enduring cinematic legacy through quality over volume.[25]
Personal life
Family and marriage
Aditya Dhar married actress Yami Gautam on June 4, 2021, in a private ceremony in Himachal Pradesh attended only by close family members.[49][50]The couple welcomed their first child, a son named Vedavid, on May 10, 2024.[51][52] Dhar and Gautam reside in an apartment in Mumbai's Bandra area, where they lead a low-profile family life.[53] They have stated plans to limit public exposure of their son, prioritizing his privacy and a conventional upbringing.[54]
Awards and recognition
National Film Awards
Aditya Dhar was awarded the National Film Award for Best Director for Uri: The Surgical Strike at the 66th National Film Awards, announced on 9 August 2019 for feature films certified by the Central Board of Film Certification in 2018.[55] The award, conferred by the Government of India's Directorate of Film Festivals, recognizes directorial excellence in storytelling, technical execution, and overall artistic merit as evaluated by an independent jury. This honor marked validation of Dhar's debut effort, which portrayed the Indian Army's 2016 cross-border surgical strikes, competing successfully against films by seasoned directors.Dhar dedicated the award to the armed forces personnel and their families, stating it honored their sacrifices and the film's role in fostering national awareness of military operations.[56] The jury's selection process, emphasizing empirical assessment of narrative authenticity and production quality over commercial factors, underscored the film's achievement in delivering a fact-based depiction grounded in real events.
Filmfare Awards
Aditya Dhar received the Filmfare Award for Best Debut Director for Uri: The Surgical Strike at the 65th Filmfare Awards ceremony held on February 15, 2020, in Guwahati, recognizing his first feature as director in portraying India's 2016 cross-border military response.[57][3]For Article 370 (2024), which Dhar co-wrote and produced, the film earned the Best Story award at the 70th Filmfare Awards on October 11, 2025, credited jointly to Dhar and Monal Thakkar for its narrative on the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir's special status.[58][59] It also secured a nomination for Best Screenplay.[3] These wins affirm Filmfare's validation of Dhar's structured, fact-grounded approach to geopolitical themes, amid the awards' shift toward popular categories that blend jury decisions with audience resonance since the 2010s.[59]
Other honors
Dhar received the Best Direction award at the International Indian Film Academy Awards (IIFA) 2020 for Uri: The Surgical Strike.[60]The film was nominated for Best Director at the Screen Awards in December 2019, recognizing its directional execution amid commercial triumph, with worldwide gross exceeding ₹350 crore against a ₹25 crore budget.[61][2]Industry observers have credited Uri with elevating standards for action-realism in Hindi cinema through its precise depiction of surgical strike operations, influencing subsequent military-themed productions.[62]
Reception and controversies
Commercial and audience success
Uri: The Surgical Strike, directed by Aditya Dhar and released on January 11, 2019, was produced on a budget of approximately ₹44 crore and achieved a worldwide gross of ₹342 crore, marking it as an all-time blockbuster with a return exceeding seven times its cost.[22][63] The film opened to modest collections of ₹8.2 crore nett in India but surged through word-of-mouth, accumulating ₹244 crore nett domestically and ₹48 crore from overseas markets, demonstrating strong audience engagement with its depiction of military operations.[64] This performance outperformed initial projections, with sustained runs in theaters reflecting broad public resonance beyond urban centers.[23]Dhar's follow-up, Article 370, released on February 23, 2024, grossed ₹110.57 crore worldwide against an estimated budget under ₹25 crore, securing a profitable verdict and positioning it as the fourth Bollywood film to surpass ₹100 crore globally that year.[34][33] It collected ₹82.37 crore nett in India, bolstered by ₹12.5 crore from overseas, with collections driven by organic audience turnout focused on themes of national security rather than pre-release hype.[65] The film's third-week earnings, including ₹3.4 crore on its third Sunday, highlighted enduring viewer interest that defied expectations of quick fade-out.[66]Both films underscore a pattern of commercial viability for Dhar's works, where empirical box office metrics—such as multiplier ratios over 7 for Uri and consistent weekly holds for Article 370—indicate a dedicated audience favoring factual portrayals of security events, evidenced by high occupancy in non-metro regions and post-theatrical streaming traction.[64][67] This audience-driven success, measured in gross earnings and footfalls exceeding 18 crore for Uri, consistently exceeded skeptic forecasts reliant on promotional scale alone.[22]
Critical responses and accusations of bias
Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019), directed by Dhar, faced accusations from certain reviewers of serving as propaganda for nationalist sentiments, with The Hindu describing it as "potently packaged and persuasive propaganda" in a January 11, 2019, review that critiqued its emphasis on military triumph following the September 18, 2016, Uri army base attack, which killed 19 soldiers.[68] Such critiques often highlighted the film's timing and tone as aligning with a pro-military narrative, despite its depiction of India's official response via surgical strikes on September 28–29, 2016, into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, as corroborated by government statements and defense ministry releases.[69]Similarly, Article 370 (2024), produced by Dhar, drew charges of advancing a pro-government agenda, with outlets like the South China Morning Post reporting on February 28, 2024, that Kashmiri residents condemned it for historical distortions in portraying the August 5, 2019, abrogation of Article 370, which revoked Jammu and Kashmir's special status and led to the bifurcation into union territories, events enacted via parliamentary resolution and presidential order.[36] Critics in Sabrang India on March 5, 2024, labeled the film as presenting a "one-sided narrative" that justified post-abrogation measures, including communication blackouts and detentions lasting into 2020, while downplaying reported human rights issues documented in UN reports from 2019–2022.[70] Similarly, Dhurandhar (2025), directed by Dhar, has faced accusations of promoting bias, with The Indian Express describing it as pushing a "bigoted vision" and The Wire calling it a hyper-nationalistic drama as subtle as a troll.[71][72]A recurring theme in these responses involves claims of jingoism or agenda-driven storytelling, as noted in aggregated critiques around these films' releases, which align with real causal sequences like terror incidents prompting state actions rather than fabricated plots.[73] However, such labels have been applied selectively, often overlooking the films' adherence to declassified timelines and expert inputs on operational details, amid broader institutional tendencies in Indian and international media to frame security-themed cinema as inherently biased when supportive of governmental countermeasures against militancy.[17]
Dhar's defenses and public statements
In response to allegations that Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) promoted propaganda, Aditya Dhar maintained that the film adhered strictly to the chronological facts of the 2016 cross-border operation, drawing from verified events rather than invention. He described it as an "army film" focused on operational reality, dismissing claims of exaggeration by emphasizing fidelity to the soldiers' experiences.[74][75] Similar defenses applied to Article 370 (2024), where Dhar refuted suggestions of government endorsement, arguing that the administration's tangible infrastructure and policy achievements—such as Ram Mandir construction—rendered any film superfluous for electoral purposes.[76]Dhar differentiated patriotism from jingoism in his work, asserting a clear boundary wherein the former involves restrained depiction of national defense without overt sensationalism. He contended that Uri avoided crossing into jingoism by prioritizing authentic military narratives over hyperbolic nationalism, a stance informed by direct engagement with the events' realities.[77]Addressing pre-release skepticism over casting Vicky Kaushal as the lead in Uri, Dhar acknowledged industry doubts labeling Kaushal a "lanky boy" unfit for the role of a commando, yet defended the selection based on the actor's dedication and suitability. The film's commercial triumph, grossing over ₹350 crore worldwide, validated this decision empirically against initial elite reservations.[78][79]Dhar consistently prioritized audience reception over critical gatekeeping, particularly critiquing what he termed "agenda-driven" reviewers who evaluate films through ideological prisms rather than merit. For Uri, he observed that despite such detractors' preemptive dismissals, the public's box office endorsement—evidenced by sustained theatrical runs—overrode their influence, rendering their opposition irrelevant.[80][81] He extended this to Article 370, stating that no external narrative supplants viewer sovereignty, and intent rooted in themes like women's empowerment in Jammu and Kashmir prevails when empirically affirmed by attendance figures.[82][83]
Filmography
As director
Dhar's debut directorial feature is the military action filmUri: The Surgical Strike, released on 11 January 2019. The film credits him as director, with principal photography occurring from March to August 2018 in locations including Bhopal and Mumbai.Dhar has maintained a limited directorial output since his debut, focusing exclusively on theatrical feature films without venturing into television or short-form content.[5] His second directorial feature, the espionage thriller Dhurandhar starring Ranveer Singh, was released theatrically on 5 December 2025.[6]
As producer and writer
Dhar co-wrote the screenplay for Article 370 (2024), a political thriller directed by Aditya Suhas Jambhale and produced under his banner, which dramatizes the Indian government's revocation of Jammu and Kashmir's special autonomous status on August 5, 2019, through the lens of intelligence operations and policy implementation.[84] The script, credited alongside Monal Thakar and Jambhale, emphasizes themes of national integration and security challenges in the region, drawing from real events including the deployment of over 40,000 additional troops in July 2019 prior to the abrogation.[84] Released theatrically on February 23, 2024, the film marked Dhar's first major production outside his directorial works, highlighting his interest in scripting narratives rooted in contemporary Indian geopolitical realities.[84]In 2025, Dhar wrote and produced Dhoom Dhaam, a Hindi-language romantic action comedy directed by Rishab Seth, featuring Yami Gautam and Pratik Gandhi in lead roles.[40] The project, originally conceived as Raat Baaki around 2016 with a different cast including Katrina Kaif and Fawad Khan, evolved into a story of an unlikely couple evading criminals and police during a chaotic wedding night pursuit.[40] Premiered on Netflix on February 14, 2025, it represents Dhar's venture into lighter, genre-blended entertainment while maintaining production oversight through collaborations with Jio Studios.[42]Prior to these, Dhar contributed as a writer and lyricist to earlier Hindi films, including uncredited or assistant roles in projects like Tezz (2012), an action thriller directed by Priyadarshan, where he assisted in dialogues and song lyrics amid a narrative of high-speed chases and immigration tensions.[85] These early efforts, often in supporting capacities for established directors, laid groundwork for his later independent scripting of security-focused stories.[5]