Imtiaz Ali’s Favourite Film Locations: Travel Stories Behind ‘Jab We Met,’ ‘Rockstar,’ ‘Highway’ and More

“Nine films in 20 years?” Imtiaz Ali seems a bit disappointed when I list all his feature film releases thus far since 2005, while meeting him at his office — which, of course, is aesthetic enough to feature in any of his movies — to talk about his two-decade stint in the industry that began with Socha Na Tha.

His tenth feature film, Main Vaapas Aaunga, is set to release on June 12 this week.

“Hmm, that’s not enough. I'm also trying to reach further or deeper or… vaster. I feel like I’ve started this journey where I'm trying to learn more — or unlearn — and come to a point where I can be better as a director and storyteller, and make a movie which is really what people love, but also exactly what I want to say in the full extent of my capacity as a filmmaker. I have come nowhere close to that in my nine films so far,” he smiles.

The filmmaker, now in his 50s, adds that he only makes films that he’s “compelled to make” and always follows his gut. “Having said that, it’s because I spent years writing all my films myself. If I’d taken in scripts by other writers, then I could have made more films for sure.”

Much has been made of Ali’s innate ability to immerse audiences into the narrative of his films, but we are here to focus on one very distinct, recurring characteristic Ali-ism if you will: how his characters find themselves, or others, during travel. 

Indeed, Ali might be the one modern-day Indian filmmaker single-handedly responsible for increasing tourism in the country (not to mention the several exotic locations overseas his characters find themselves in), inspiring an entire generation of film-watchers to pack their bags and wander off into the unknown. 

This love for travel, and setting coming-of-age and romantic arcs during the course of a journey — or in an environment far removed from one’s natural setting — stems from the many trips Ali used to take as a child, mostly by train. 

“Cinema takes me to places which I haven't seen before; that fascination I had, it's still always there. So I’m less likely to watch a wonderful film set in Bombay, in Andheri West.. but a not-so-great film based in some village in the hills of the Andes Mountains? I’m all for it!” he laughs.

Does he remember the first time one such journey invoked the storyteller and dreamer in him? “Maybe not the very first time, but I do have an important memory...” he begins.

“So this one time, I was going to Delhi from my hometown of Jamshedpur from the Tatanagar Railway Station on the Utkal Express. It’s usually so hot inside the train that people don’t travel in it often, so I was easily able to get a berth. Now, I was sharing the compartment with this family of villagers from Rajasthan: a father, mother and their daughter. I was in college back then, and the daughter was probably around five to six years younger than me, in her teens. As the journey passed, I helped them out a little bit by filling water for them to drink in their matka, helping them settle down, etc.,” Ali says.

“Now, something fascinating begins to happen. You know how young people can romantically perceive an older person? This young girl began to, almost unconsciously, imitate with me how her mother treated the father. So if the lady served her husband while he ate — and then ate from the same plate after he was done — the girl did the same with me! She was sitting next to me and looking at me in the way she’d seen actors looking at each other in the movies… maybe with the same kind of affection or adoration that existed between her parents. I was also smart enough to understand that the father and mother were observing their daughter for the first time in this light; they could see a glimpse of a woman in their girl.. and they were allowing it. And I was like, what is even happening here?!”

“But then, slowly, I started becoming part of this family, the son-in-law if you will (laughs). Obviously nothing physical happened, but the energy was just so evident. Now, the dad would have beaten the shit out of any boy who tried to get close to their daughter, right? But inside this compartment, in this time capsule of sorts, they let it happen only because of the temporariness of the journey as it was so detached from their day-to-day life.”

“I will never forget that journey. It was an important experience for me, as it taught me that travel — especially back then with no phones or social media — really helped you zone into a world that is between fact and fiction. You did it for your own entertainment, and different things happen when you let yourself go so into yourself,” he reminisces. 

In the spirit of his love for travel, we ask Imtiaz Ali to go through his filmography in chronological order and recall his favourite locations and scenes that still serve as a resonant memory for each of his released titles.

Socha Na Tha (2005)

What comes to mind straightway is being at this beach called Querim in Goa; it’s actually at the edge of Goa, almost on the border of Maharashtra. It’s the most spectacular-looking beach and it used to take a really long time to get there. While we were filming a song, there was a situation where the girl (Ayesha Takia) was in danger of being swept away by the waves, but the scene was so pretty that we just kept taking more and more risks. (laughs)

All those shots of her dressed in an orange sarong and coming out of those caves by the beach, and going into the water which was orange-tinted already… that’s my favourite memory from the shoot. There’s a certain sense of freedom and frolic associated with that location in my mind, which actually contributed a lot to the themes explored in Socha Na Tha.

Jab We Met (2007)

Ah... so I reminisce most about filming at this stunning haveli in Nabha in Punjab. It was one of the most chaotic schedules and everything was scattered and messed up. I could only plan one scene at a time, and it was a challenge to keep the unit in order too. Moreover, everyone was staying far away from the location in other hotels; Shahid and Kareena came from Chandigarh everyday while the unit travelled from Patiala. I decided to stay by myself alone in this huge haveli — nobody lived there, not even the owners — because I didn’t want to waste time travelling back and forth from the hotel, and instead focus on planning the next scene and fine-tuning the dialogues.

On top of it, people kept saying that the house was haunted, and my cameraman Natty (Subramaniam) went on about encountering a ghost. I didn’t even care about if it was true, as I just had no time to worry about anything else! At the end of 20 days there, I couldn’t believe I’d pulled it off and really felt a gratitude I've never felt before professionally; I wandered out into the vast area outside the haveli and silently thanked whoever was responsible for making this happen.

Love Aaj Kal (2009)

The cafe in London where Saif’s character of Jai and Rishiji’s character of Veer meet. We used various aspects of that cafe, and it was also a very unique location, as it was tight next to a river. So we took some shots from the river and some from the very edge, both night and day. The whole story of Love Aaj Kal is based in this cafe, because it revolves around the conversation between these two people. 

This was also my first time shooting abroad. A lot of people in the supporting cast weren’t really actors, but just roped in to play these small roles. Some of them were Indians, and some belonged to other ethnicities. So interacting with people from various nationalities was something I hadn’t experienced before; this really sensitised me to working with foreign professionals after years of just having a distant perception about them.

Also, there was a thriving Polish community in London during the shoot in 2008-09. Ssince our junior artist supplier was Polish — she provided a lot of production support too — several Polish people were on set and I got very friendly with them. My lasting memory of that time in London was something I witnessed on the Tube: many people holding onto the railing for support, but all their arms were of different colours, since they belonged to different cultures and ethnicities. It would make for a fantastic movie poster.

Rockstar (2011)

Rockstar brings to my memory a lot of Prague. I had read that Prague was the only European capital that was not flattened in the Second World War.The buildings that are present must have been constructed at least 100 years before the war, unlike in other locations like Berlin or Warsaw which have monuments that were modern reconstructions of what had been flattened earlier. 

I wanted to film Jordan (Ranbir Kapoor) amidst the most antique of buildings and once I visited Prague for the recce, I knew we had found our spot. It is also a very dark city.. it’s not like Paris, you know? If you observe a regular bench in one of those parks in Prague, you will notice that the iron that goes round and round on the sides of the bench finally becomes a devil's tail; it was the center of witchcraft in Europe at some point of time. So there's a certain dark beauty to it, and it matched exactly what I wanted to show in Rockstar.

Highway (2014)

Since the whole film was about finding one’s freedom… I kept thinking, could I take myself out of the trappings of being a successful filmmaker? That was the question I posed (to myself) during this film. And I did feel this incredible sense of freedom while shooting all along the highways of Punjab, Delhi, and so on. The cinematographer Anil Mehta and I decided to only use a static camera — we used a trolley for just two shots — and operated a very tight, economic setup with natural light most of the time.

Because we didn’t have any heavy gear, we could travel and shoot at any speed we wanted. All those scenes of the truck on the road looked so fabulous because we were going at 80 km/h! We just had to tie the camera, ask the girl to look out (of the window of the truck) and it was magic; Alia was also such a revelation in that role. If we had shot at 30 (km/hr), she wouldn’t have felt that wind hitting her as such, and those same shots would have looked terrible.

Also, while filming the Patakha Guddi song, we didn’t have the final track, so we used this Punjabi folk song called Jugni which symbolises feminine energy and freedom; it was very inspiring to me and I got entranced by it throughout.

Tamasha (2015)

Filming with Ranbir and Deepika at the island of Corsica in France was such a crazy, special experience. There was an outlandishness to the telling of the Tamasha story, and Corsica fit the brief perfectly. I was looking for a place that really was at the corner of the world, and the last spot where you’d imagine finding an Indian. 

The island was just so unique in so many ways; the people are very proud and old-fashioned, they have a distinct style of preparing their food, there are exotic herbs everywhere, their music is only vocal but has complicated choir notes… Like I said, it was an outlandish experience, but so consistent culturally in every way. Because they have been cooking in their own juices forever and been hostile to everybody else, nobody really goes there. I think a bit of all this rubbed off onto the rest of the film as well.

Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017)

The place that connected with me most during this shoot was Portugal. See, I will never leave India, but the only other place I can even imagine living at for sometime, is Portugal. Maybe I have such strong feelings because of the production company I was working with for the film, which comprised all ladies from one family. Somebody’s mother was the art director, the aunt was the line producer, and so on.. working with them was so fascinating.

We also visited the spot from where Vasco da Gama set sail from Portugal to India. The area is filled with this particular style of music, of women singing longingly for their sailors that have left the shores; it’s called 'Fado' and they are all laments. You can walk into live bars and find people on the guitar singing these Portuguese laments.. it was all bewitching. Similarly, there’s a scene in the film where Harry (Shah Rukh Khan) says that he’s standing on the same shores from where Vasco da Gama has maybe gone to India and how the women remember him; it’s like he is trying to recall some lover from the past or a home which he can’t go back to now.

Love Aaj Kal (2020)

Udaipur spoke to me the most here. The city has this curious nature of always being the second-best, the also-ran in comparison to Jaipur... but that’s exactly why it felt more personal. There is a little datedness to it with the Rajasthani feeling of ethnic glamor, but in a slightly understated manner, which is also in the personality of the people there and their culture.

When you go to film in a place like Rajasthan, the tendency is there to show the tallest monument, the biggest building… But here, there was nothing that extravagant and I got the feeling constantly that everything felt more intimate, more mine.

In the flashback portions, I love the locations so much, especially during the beginning of the song Shayad; you notice that she’s on her balcony, and he’s looking at her from around a corner below.. he can see her, but she can’t. Such sequences were possible only because of the amazing live locations; the people in Udaipur were so incredibly welcoming, and let us shoot inside all their homes making the entire experience a privilege.

Amar Singh Chamkila (2024)

We shot all over Punjab, but my fondest memory is of shooting at this village in the Sangrur district. The funny thing is that this song — Naram Kaalja — wasn’t planned at all. I just wanted to film a little portion showing that women also like Chamkila songs, but before I knew it, Rahman sir had composed the track fully and he pushed me to shoot it! I tried to refuse, but he just kept going, "Oh, you’ll figure it out..” and I had to relent. 

I was very flustered initially, but then a mini movement of sorts happened when we were filming with all these women who came to the location from several villages. We didn’t have a choreographer, so the executive producer of the film had to figure out the steps at night and basically wing it the next morning. Everyone had to dance in their own clothes as there weren’t any costumes, but that didn’t matter; it’s a special number with 300 real women, and their energy, the real beauty that you see in the song was palpable. 

It turned out to be an unforgettable experience. The entire village turned up to witness the shoot, and people were dressed up in their Sunday best! One farmer wore a three-piece suit at 5am on a Sunday morning. Eventually, the whole thing became a party, a fiesta.. all the villagers were just hanging out at our tent, eating and talking to us the whole day. You know, sometimes, when you are shooting in a certain location, you associate with the people and the land in a special way. That happened with Chamkila.