Airlift is a 2016 Indian war thriller film directed by Raja Krishna Menon, and starring Akshay Kumar, Nimrat Kaur, Purab Kohli and Lena in pivotal roles. The script, written by Raja Krishna Menon developed the idea after studying the whole incident of the war, and which he subsequently expanded. The film follows Ranjit Katyal (Kumar), a Kuwait-based businessman, carries out a biggest civil operation of evacuation of Indians based in Kuwait during the Iraq-Kuwait war carried out during the reign of Iraqi emperor Saddam Hussein.
Principal photography of the film began in February 2015 and took place in India and the United Arab Emirates, and was overseen by an international crew. With a budget of ₹30 crore (US$4.4 million), the film premiered worldwide on 22 January 2016. The marketing of the film played an important role in the film’s promotion and collaborated with the flight company Air India, who had a major contribution in the evacuation of record-breaking number of Indians during the war.
