Alia Bhatt Upcoming projects What is one of her upcoming projects? She is also the celebrity endorser for a number of brands and products, including Coca-Cola, Garnier and Maybelline. Does she have any films planned? I don't know.
What other projects is she working on?
What other projects is Alia Bhatt working on besides films?
Bhatt has performed playback singing for the song "Sooha Saaha" in Highway (2014). A. R. Rahman, the composer of the film, invited her to his music school to undergo training. In 2014, she sang the unplugged version of the song "Samjhawan", for the composers Sharib-Toshi, in Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania. In 2016, she sang an alternate version of the song "Ikk Kudi", for the soundtrack of Udta Punjab, with her co-star Dosanjh.  In addition to acting in films, Bhatt has performed at the Filmfare, Screen and Stardust award ceremonies, and has also participated in a stage show in Hong Kong alongside Varun Dhawan and Sidharth Malhotra. In 2013, she performed at a charity event with Dhawan, Malhotra, Aditya Roy Kapur, Shraddha Kapoor and Huma Qureshi to raise funds for the flood-affected victims of Uttarakhand. In August 2016, she performed in various cities of the United States as a part of the "Dream Team 2016" tour, alongside actors Dhawan, Malhotra, Kapur, Katrina Kaif, Parineeti Chopra, filmmaker Karan Johar, and singer Badshah.  In 2013, Bhatt took part in a campaign for PETA to raise awareness about homeless animals. In 2017, Bhatt launched an ecological initiative named CoExist to raise awareness about the welfare of street animals. The following year, she collaborated with Facebook Live for a campaign named Find Your Green, to campaign for environmentalism.  In 2014, Bhatt launched her own line of clothing for women in association with the online fashion portal Jabong.com; she described the collection to be "very simple" and "very me". She is also the celebrity endorser for a number of brands and products, including Coca-Cola, Garnier and Maybelline. CANNOTANSWER
In 2013, Bhatt took part in a campaign for PETA to raise awareness about homeless animals.
Alia Bhatt (; born 15 March 1993) is an Indian-born British actress who works in Hindi-language films. Her accolades include four Filmfare Awards. She has appeared in Forbes India Celebrity 100 list since 2014 and was featured by Forbes Asia in their 30 Under 30 list of 2017.

Born into the Bhatt family, she is the daughter of filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt and actress Soni Razdan. After making her acting debut as a child in the 1999 thriller Sangharsh, she played her first leading role in Karan Johar's teen drama Student of the Year (2012). She went on to establish herself with starring roles in several films produced by Johar's studio Dharma Productions, including the romances 2 States (2014), Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania (2014), and Badrinath Ki Dulhania (2017); and the coming-of-age drama Dear Zindagi (2016). Bhatt won the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actress for playing a kidnapping victim in the road drama Highway (2014), and three Best Actress awards at the ceremony for playing a Bihari migrant in the crime drama Udta Punjab (2016), an undercover spy in the thriller Raazi (2018), and the volatile girlfriend of an aspiring rapper in the musical drama Gully Boy (2019).

Additional to acting in films, Bhatt has launched her own line of clothing and handbags as well as the production company Eternal Sunshine, and is the founder of the ecological initiative CoExist. She has sung six of her film songs, including the single "Samjhawan Unplugged" in 2014. She has also appeared in various music videos including Prada.

Early life
Alia Bhatt was born on 15 March 1993 in Bombay (present-day Mumbai) into the Bhatt family to Indian film director Mahesh Bhatt and actress Soni Razdan. Her father is of Gujarati descent and her mother is of Kashmiri Pandit and German ancestry. She holds British citizenship. She has an elder sister, Shaheen, and two half-siblings, Pooja and Rahul Bhatt. Actor Emraan Hashmi and director Mohit Suri  are her paternal cousins, while producer Mukesh Bhatt is her uncle. Bhatt was educated at the Jamnabai Narsee School.

Describing her childhood, Bhatt has said, "I had a rather grounded and modest upbringing. I didn’t get the pleasures that people assume I would’ve got because I am Mahesh Bhatt’s daughter." Growing up, she did not share a close bond with her father; Razdan has said that she raised her children mostly as a single parent as her husband did not take much interest in their lives. Bhatt aspired to be an actress from a young age, and has said that she first realised it while rehearsing for the school choir in kindergarten. She soon began dance lessons at Shiamak Davar's institute. Her first acting role was at age five in her father's production venture Sangharsh (1999), in which she briefly played the younger version of Preity Zinta's character. Talking about her experience, Bhatt later said, "I don’t remember much of the shoot. I would go to the sets only for the food".

Acting career

Debut and establishing as a leading lady (2012–2015)

Bhatt had her first leading role in 2012 with Karan Johar's teen film Student of the Year, alongside Sidharth Malhotra and Varun Dhawan. She auditioned alongside 500 girls and was cast after losing 16 kg. She played a sophisticated teenage girl involved in a love triangle. Anupama Chopra of Hindustan Times mentioned similarities between her character Shanaya Singhania and Kareena Kapoor's Pooja "Poo" Sharma in Johar's Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... (2001), but noted that her performance was "without the killer attitude". Lisa Tsering of The Hollywood Reporter dismissed her as "a washout. Not only is she inelegant in the dance numbers, but her expressions are limited; and the digital retouching of her face throughout the film is a distraction". Student of the Year grossed  at the box office, becoming a commercial success.

Dismayed by the critical response to Student of the Year, Bhatt was keen to play a better role. Following a year-long absence from the screen, similar to that of co-stars Malhotra and Dhawan, she found an opportunity with Imtiaz Ali's road film Highway (2014), in which she starred as a lonely teenage girl who develops stockholm syndrome after being abducted. She took diction lessons to improve her Hindi, and was challenged by the emotional and physical requirements of the part. Ali shot the film sequentially and several scenes were improvised on set based on Bhatt's reactions. She has said that several aspects of her character's journey mirrored her own, as it was the first time she experienced situations that were different from her own privileged upbringing. Ronnie Scheib of Variety took note of her "endearingly cockeyed perf" and commended her for "bringing an underlying sadness and wistful intelligence" to her part. The film underperformed at the box office, but Bhatt won the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actress and also gained a Best Actress nomination at the ceremony. She also appeared in Vikas Bahl's short film on women's safety, entitled Going Home.

Continuing her collaboration with Johar's company, Dharma Productions, Bhatt starred in the romantic films 2 States, fellow-produced by Highway producer Sajid Nadiadwala, and Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania (both 2014). The former was an adaptation of Chetan Bhagat's novel of the same name, and revolves about two management students who have trouble convincing their parents of their relationship. For her role as a headstrong Tamil girl, she learnt Tamil and spoke her lines in that language with help from a tutor. Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express was appreciative of Bhatt, labelling her a "surprise" and "easy and fresh and natural". She played a Punjabi girl who has an affair before her wedding in Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania, which marked the debut of writer-director Shashank Khaitan in a distinct first for the studio. Starring Dhawan in the titular role of a flirtatious Punjabi boy Rakesh, the film was described as a tribute to Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) by Johar, and also marked the debut of television actor Siddharth Shukla. Writing for India Today, Rohit Khilnani thought that Bhatt had pitched in "one of her best performances so far", though Nandini Ramnath of Mint found her lacking in subtlety, writing that she was "more comfortable acting out her feelings through dialogue and actions". Both films were commercially successful, each earning over  worldwide. Accomplishments through 2014 established Bhatt as a successful actress in Bollywood.

Bhatt reunited with Bahl for the romantic comedy Shaandaar. Released in 2015, the film features Shahid Kapoor and Bhatt as insomniacs who fall in love during a destination wedding. Kunal Guha of Mumbai Mirror criticised the film and wrote that Bhatt "socks life into her character but fails to pump any into this film". Shaandaar did not perform well commercially. She began 2016 with a supporting role in the ensemble drama Kapoor & Sons, which was a critical and commercial success.

Continued success and accolades (2016–2018) 
Bhatt next took on the part of a poor Bihari migrant in Udta Punjab (2016), a crime drama about substance abuse from writer-director Abhishek Chaubey. The intense role marked a departure from the mostly light-hearted parts she had played before in her career with the exception of Highway, and in preparation, she watched documentaries on drug abuse and learned to speak a Bihari dialect. The film generated controversy when the Central Board of Film Certification deemed that it represented Punjab in a negative light and demanded extensive censorship before its release. The Bombay High Court later cleared the film for exhibition with one scene cut. Bhatt's performance was critically acclaimed. Raja Sen of Rediff.com wrote that she "commits to her accent and deals with the film's most unsavoury section, and is stunning during an incendiary speech that elevates the entire film to a whole other level." Bhatt next played a troubled young woman who consults with a therapist (played by Shah Rukh Khan) in Gauri Shinde's coming-of-age film Dear Zindagi (2016). Writing for IndieWire, Anisha Jhaveri commended her for providing millennial angst with "a three-dimensionality". Udta Punjab and Dear Zindagi gained Bhatt awards attention; for the former, she won the Screen Award and the Filmfare Award for Best Actress, and for the latter, she received an additional Best Actress nomination at Filmfare.

The series of successful films continued with Bhatt's next projectthe romantic comedy Badrinath Ki Dulhania (2017)which reunited her with Khaitan and Dhawan. It tells the story of an independent young woman (Bhatt) who refuses to conform to patriarchal expectations from her chauvinistic fiancée (Dhawan). Rachel Saltz of The New York Times took note of the film's statement on gender equality and wrote, "Without ever falling into the clichés of spunky Bollywood heroine, [Bhatt] effortlessly embodies that admirable thing: a modern woman." She received another Filmfare nomination for Best Actress. Meghna Gulzar's espionage thriller Raazi (2018) starred Bhatt as Sehmat Khan, a Kashmiri spy married to a Pakistani army officer. Set during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, the film is an adaptation of Harinder Sikka's novel Calling Sehmat. Anna M. M. Vetticad of Firstpost found Bhatt to be "stupendous" in the role, adding that "the young star once again displaying the maturity and confidence of a veteran on camera". Raazi proved to be one of the highest-grossing female-led Hindi films, and its success led Box Office India to credit Bhatt as the most successful contemporary actress of Hindi cinema. She won another Best Actress award at Filmfare.

Gully Boy and beyond (2019–present)

Bhatt launched her own production company named Eternal Sunshine Productions in early 2019, with a newfound aim on fresh, relatable and non-conformist stories. Her first appearance in the year came with a pivotal role opposite Ranveer Singh in Zoya Akhtar's Gully Boy, a musical inspired by the life of the street rappers Divine and Naezy. She attended acting workshops to learn a ghetto dialect to enable her to improvise on set. The film premiered at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival. Writing for Screen International, Lee Marshall opined that "it's Bhatt’s sharp performance that carries most successfully the mix of wry humour, romance and social comment that Gully Boy essays". With global earnings of over , the film emerged as Bhatt's highest-grossing release. Gully Boy won a record 13 Filmfare Awards, and Bhatt was awarded with her career's third Best Actress trophy. The ensemble period drama Kalank marked Bhatt's biggest-budget film to that point. Set in the 1940s prior to the partition of India, it featured Dhawan and her as star-crossed lovers, alongside a cast comprising Madhuri Dixit, Sonakshi Sinha, Dear Zindagi guest-costar Aditya Roy Kapur and Sanjay Dutt. She watched the films Mughal-e-Azam (1960) and Umrao Jaan (1981) to learn the body language of women from the era; to better her Urdu-speaking skills, she watched the Pakistani television series Zindagi Gulzar Hai. Shubhra Gupta bemoaned that she was "watchable, if increasingly, exasperatingly familiar". The film did not perform well at the box office.

Bhatt next starred in Sadak 2 (2020), a sequel to her father's crime film Sadak (1991), which due to the COVID-19 pandemic in India could not be released theatrically and instead streamed on Disney+ Hotstar, starring Dutt and Kapur alongside her. The death of Sushant Singh Rajput sparked a debate on nepotism in the Hindi film industry; his fans blamed Bhatt for being one of the beneficiaries of nepotism and for once speaking dismissively of Rajput on Johar's chat show Koffee with Karan. This led to vote brigading on the film's trailer on YouTube, on which it became the second most-disliked video. The film received negative reviews, and Pallabi Dey Purkayastha of The Times of India dismissed Bhatt's performance "by her own high standards" to be "strictly average".

In 2022, Bhatt starred in the biographical crime drama Gangubai Kathiawadi where she portrayed the role of a mafia don and a madame in the red light area of Kamathipura. Her performance received critical acclaim. Mugdha Kapoor Safaya of DNA India wrote “Alia simply owns the screen as she becomes Gangubai. The conviction with which she has soaked every bit of Gangubai and presented it onscreen is relayed via her body language, voice, dialogue delivery, her expressions and adayegi.”

Upcoming projects
Bhatt's upcoming projects include a starring role opposite Ranbir Kapoor in Ayan Mukerji's fantasy film trilogy, the first of which is named Brahmāstra. She will appear alongside N.T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan in the Telugu-language period film RRRBhatt has also committed to star opposite Ranveer Singh in the romantic comedy Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani directed by Karan Johar. She will also produce and star in the black comedy Darlings, opposite Shefali Shah.

Other work and media image

Bhatt has performed playback singing for the song "Sooha Saaha" in Highway (2014). A. R. Rahman, the composer of the film, invited her to his music school to undergo training. In 2014, she sang the unplugged version of the song "Samjhawan", for the composers Sharib-Toshi, in Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania. In 2016, she sang an alternate version of the song "Ikk Kudi", for the soundtrack of Udta Punjab, with her co-star Dosanjh.

Bhatt has performed on stage at the Filmfare, Screen and Stardust award ceremonies, and has also participated in a stage show in Hong Kong alongside Varun Dhawan and Sidharth Malhotra. In 2013, she performed at a charity event with Dhawan, Malhotra, Aditya Roy Kapur, Shraddha Kapoor and Huma Qureshi to raise funds for the flood-affected victims of Uttarakhand. In August 2016, she performed in various cities of America for the "Dream Team 2016" tour, alongside Johar, the actors Dhawan, Malhotra, Roy Kapur, Katrina Kaif, Parineeti Chopra, and the singer Badshah.

In 2013, Bhatt took part in a campaign for PETA to raise awareness on homeless animals. In 2017, she launched an ecological initiative named CoExist to raise awareness about the welfare of street animals. The following year, she collaborated with Facebook Live for a campaign named Find Your Green, to campaign for environmentalism. Bhatt designed her own clothing brand for women in 2014 for the online fashion portal Jabong.com and in 2018, she launched her own line of handbags for VIP Industries.

In 2017, Bhatt was featured by Forbes Asia in their 30 Under 30 list. She has appeared in Forbes India Celebrity 100 list since 2014, peaking at the eighth position in 2019. That year, the magazine estimated her annual income to be  and listed her as the highest-paid actress in the country. In 2018 and 2019, the Indian edition of GQ featured her among the nation's 50 most influential young people and credited her for "striking a balance between big-budget, all-star blowouts and more script-oriented films". Bhatt was listed in first place in The Times of Indias "50 Most Desirable Women" list of 2018.

Bhatt is also the celebrity endorser for a number of brands and products, including Coca-Cola, Garnier and Maybelline. Duff & Phelps estimated her brand value to be US$36.5 million, in 2018, the eighth highest of Indian celebrities.

Filmography

Films

Short films

Music videos

Discography

Accolades

For her role in Highway (2014), Bhatt won the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actress. She also received the Filmfare Award for Best Actress for her roles in Udta Punjab (2016), Raazi (2018) and Gully Boy (2019).

References

External links 

 
 
 
 

1993 births
Actresses in Hindi cinema
Alia
British actresses of Indian descent
British people of German descent
Gujarati people
Kashmiri people
Living people
Filmfare Awards winners
Indian female models
Bollywood playback singers
Screen Awards winners
Zee Cine Awards winners
International Indian Film Academy Awards winners
Indian people of German descent
Forbes 30 Under 30 recipients
21st-century Indian actresses
Kara Lynch (often stylized as kara lynch) is an American artist who teaches at Hampshire College.

Biography 
Kara Lynch has an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego.

Work 
Lynch works in video and time-based media. Her projects include Black Russians, Mouhawala Oula, The Outing, and Xing Over. Lynch recorded her time working in Moscow through video and in "a series of handwritten books" during her artist's residency in 1994.

In 2015, she collaborated with Peggy Piesche on an installation called Deposits of future at the FAVT: Future Africa Visions in Time exhibition put on by the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies.

Invisible 
Invisible is an ongoing project in audio installation, and one of Lynch's most notable projects. The project is an extended speculation, and an imagination of what if the transatlantic slave trade had not happened. The work is written about by Gascia Ouzounian in a 2008 dissertation.

Ouzounian writes of the project,As a haunted work, it emerges in uncanny ways. Since 2001, the year she finished her landmark documentary Black Russians, Lynch has been working on Invisible, what she considers a "forever project." The forever-ness of Invisible is the forever-ness of memory and its infinite reflection in the lived environment. For Lynch, it is more precisely the forever-ness of the memory of slavery, a memory which is mapped out in Lynch's own lived environment in the United States in ways that she must continually process, negotiate, and re-reflect through this immense work."INVISIBLE :: saved," an installment of the Invisible project, was awarded a MAP Fund grant in 2018. This installment focuses on the lynching of Laura Nelson and her teenage son, and is described as "a living memorial" involving live choir performances taking place on steel bridges.

Publications 
Lynch is the co-editor of the anthology We Travel the SpaceWays: Black Imagination, Fragments and Diffractions. She has also contributed to the Ulbandus Review and Cabinet Magazine.

References

University of California, San Diego alumni
Hampshire College faculty
American women artists
American women academics Utopia, internationally titled Dreamland, is a Logie Award-winning Australian television comedy series by Working Dog Productions that premiered on the ABC on 13 August 2014.  The series follows the working lives of a team in the fictional Nation Building Authority, a newly created government organisation. The Authority is responsible for overseeing major infrastructure projects, from announcement to unveiling.  The series explores the collision between bureaucracy and grand ambitions. The second series aired in 2015, beginning with the first episode on 19 August 2015. The third series aired in 2017, beginning with the first episode on 19 July 2017. The fourth series aired in 2019, beginning on 21 August 2019.  No word as yet if a fifth season has been comissioned or produced.

Plot
The series is set inside the offices of the fictional Nation Building Authority, a newly created government organisation responsible for overseeing major infrastructure projects ranging from new roads and rail lines to airports and high rise urban developments. It follows the working lives of a tight-knit team of bureaucrats in charge of guiding big building schemes from announcement to unveiling. Throughout the series grand projects are frustrated by self-interest, publicity stunts, constant shifts in political priorities and bureaucracy.

The series features a number of recurring themes. The office is continually focused on various fads. In one episode, staff become obsessed with exercise after a visit from a Heart Smart representative, practicing communal yoga in the office at regular intervals. In another episode, Amy (Davidson) hires an indoor plant consultant, making major changes to office air conditioning and lighting, after Tony's (Sitch) plant dies and he asks for a replacement. 

Rhonda (Flanagan) frequently attends conferences or workshops on various forms of online media. She returns to the office enthusiastically and doggedly drawing priorities away from important projects to superficial online projects on how to engage more with their relevant "audience".

Background
Utopia is written and produced by three of the founding members of Working Dog Productions: Rob Sitch, Santo Cilauro and Tom Gleisner. It is produced by Michael Hirsh, directed by Sitch who also stars as one of the main characters Tony, and casting managed by Jane Kennedy. When casting, Sitch wanted to have actors that possessed a certain acting style, that appeared as if nothing absurd was going on. Sitch described the series as being about "the currency of grand dreams". He described that the idea of the "Nation Building Authority" was to portray it as one of those things that got set up in a bit of a mad rush and that under all the grand dreams there was a white elephant waiting to appear. Utopia continues on the satirical themes of other Working Dog works such as Frontline and The Hollowmen. Sitch also noted that the series was more observational than satirical and that it depicted how organisations may or may not function. When creating the show, Gleisner said the production team spoke to people who worked with government authorities and had experienced for themselves the daily unpredictabilities of working in these environments.

Characters 
Main cast
 Tony Woodford (Rob Sitch) is the CEO of the NBA, and is constantly exasperated by his inability to achieve anything other than meetings, studies and reports. 
 Jim Gibson (Anthony Lehmann) is the government liaison. He is unceasingly positive about new government projects, while being oblivious to the problems and chaos they cause.
 Nat Russell (Celia Pacquola) is the Chief Operations Officer, and Tony's second in charge. The only other competent person in the office, she is just as frustrated as Tony.
 Scott Byrnes (Dave Lawson) is a project assistant, an enthusiastic guy who doesn't actually do much. He can sometimes be helpful to Tony.
 Rhonda Stewart (Kitty Flanagan) is the media manager. She forcefully pushes her narrow agenda, often based on some new fad, ignoring more important priorities.
 Katie Norris (Emma-Louise Wilson) is Tony's personal assistant. She constantly tries to be helpful but is somewhat incompetent.
 Hugh (Luke McGregor) is Nat's project assistant, who constantly reminds her of how difficult it is to do things. (Series 1–2)
 Amy (Michelle Lim Davidson) is the office receptionist, who is always positive and chirpy, but unable to see the big picture. (Series 1–2)
 Karsten Leith (Toby Truslove) a media and marketing content creator and an ally of Rhonda, who is highly optimistic and always has a grand vision. (Series 1–2; Guest Series 3-4)
 Ashan De Silva (Dilruk Jayasinha) is a senior project manager at the NBA with degrees in accounting, business administration and engineering. He is yet to master the office coffee machine. (Series 3–4)
 Courtney Kano (Nina Oyama) is the Executive Assistant and Office Manager, and likes to refer to herself as the NBA's Chief Happiness Officer, after having recently completed an anger management course. (Series 3–4)

Recurring characters
 Beverley Sadler (Rebecca Massey) is the head of the Human Resources Department and an experienced recruiter whose main role is conducting exit interviews with staff members who have quit after three weeks in the job. She frequently uses HR jargon and always asks what the date is. (Series 2–4) 
 Brian Collins (Jamie Robertson) has the official title 'Head of Building Services and Security', but his actual role is to ensure that everyone is wearing the correct lanyard. (Series 3–4)

Series overview

Episodes

Series 1 (2014)

Series 2 (2015)

Series 3 (2017)

Series 4 (2019)

Reception
Anne Pender from The Conversation described Utopia as "light – but sharp and witty" political satire. She praised the talents of the writers and the cast of "exceptional actors". She also noted that it was an improvement from The Speechmaker, a stage show that Sitch and Working Dog Productions put together earlier in 2014. David Knox from TV Tonight noted the show's similarity to Sitch's previous work, The Hollowmen. In addition to praising the performances of cast members, he opined that the city backdrop of East Melbourne gave the series a "fresh, contemporary feel" accompanied by a "driving percussion soundtrack" and "cityscape montages". Ahmad Kahn from The Huffington Post drew comparisons with the earlier and more cynical seasons of American workplace comedies The Office and Parks and Recreation, as well as saying that Utopia offers a "painfully funny satire that focuses on the interaction between the media and press friendly projects wanted by government administrations and the disparities it presents to those in the agency who would prefer practicality."

Netflix purchased the rights to the program in 2015 to broadcast the first two series under the title Dreamland. Series 1 began airing on PBS in the USA on 21 July 2018.

Awards and nominations

See also
List of Australian television series
List of Australian Broadcasting Corporation programs

References

External links
Website on ABC 

2014 Australian television series debuts
Australian Broadcasting Corporation original programming
Australian comedy television series
Television shows set in Melbourne