Jigra 2024

Satya, Alia Bhatt is a young woman who has endured more than her fair share of hardship. As a child, she witnesses her father commit suicide and goes to great lengths to shield her younger brother Ankur, Vedang Raina, from the scene. Orphaned, the siblings are placed with wealthy but distant relatives, and Satya takes on responsibility as the house staff manager, using her position to guard family secrets and to protect Ankur from the harsher edges of their world. She becomes extremely protective of Ankur, bordering on paranoia. Ankur grows into a bright, rule-abiding engineer, while Satya’s willingness to bend rules and to do whatever it takes to shield him becomes a defining trait of their bond.

Everything changes when Kabir, Aditya Nanda, the family’s son who struggles with addiction and a checkered academic record, enters their orbit. Satya greets him with trepidation, but Ankur sees in Kabir a friend and a possible ally. Their collaboration takes a turn when Kabir’s father agrees to sponsor Ankur’s software project, hoping it will reform Kabir’s life. The sponsorship brings the two young men on a business trip to Hanshi Dao, a fictional country whose draconian drug laws equate possession with the death penalty by electrocution. Neither Ankur nor Kabir realizes the full weight of the laws, as they continue to party and work, ignorant of the danger lurking in the legal system.

At a party, Kabir buys drugs, unknowingly placing Ankur and himself at risk. When they are arrested for possession, Ankur calls Satya to declare that it was Kabir who possessed the drugs. Satya understands, from past family dealings with her uncle, that the family’s leverage may be used to secure a release for Kabir, potentially at a deadly price for Ankur. A family lawyer persuades Ankur to protect his cousin’s life by lying that he was the one who possessed the drugs, conveniently omitting the fact that he would be imprisoned for only three months before eventual execution. Satya is devastated by this deceit and resolves to rescue Ankur at any cost.

Satya travels to Hanshi Dao, diving into a landscape of rigid rules, social stratification, and a justice system that seems designed to crush the vulnerable. She burns her uncle’s office in a symbolic act of rebellion, then enters the prison to reunite with her brother. Inside, Ankur makes a few friends among other inmates who are wrongly charged, and the pair begins to explore escape options. Ankur forms ties with Bhatia’s son Tony and Muthu’s fellow prisoner Chandan, while Satya enlists two unlikely allies: Bhatia, a former gangster whose own son has faced a similar nightmare, Manoj Pahwa and Muthu, Rahul Ravindran, an ex-policeman haunted by his past mistakes who is willing to risk everything to help them. Together, they start to hatch a plan to break Ankur and the other prisoners out.

Forward momentum intensifies as the plan takes shape around a coast festival day—the time when the city is crowded with revelers and the law seems to loosen its grip. The boys themselves aim to escape through the sewage system, while Satya and her allies maneuver to push them toward kitchen duties to keep watch. The warden, Landa, Vivek Gomber, grows suspicious as the group notices irregular assignments that link the trio to the same three workers who will keep the system running. The double plan is foiled when Landa intercepts the escape attempt, pushing the execution dates of Ankur and Kabir forward and tightening the noose around Satya and the others.

Undeterred, Satya takes a radical step and tries to disable the prison’s power grid to collapse security and allow a mass breakout. Muthu resists this dangerous move, trying to stop her, but Satya insists, and tragedy strikes when she ends up killing Muthu. Yet even this act cannot stop her resolve: the power grid fails to render the prison safe, and she pivots to a more explosive tactic to create chaos and allow the escape. As the corridors flood with inmates, Bhatia falls to a fatal bullet, cut down as the plan spirals toward a dangerous climax.

With the guards closing in, the escape becomes a tense chase. Satya and the boys flee by boat, disguising themselves as aid workers from Doctors Without Borders as Landa and his team close in. The plan to avert a national incident succeeds only because Malaysian authorities, arranged by Muthu in advance, intercept and neutralize Landa, enabling the group to slip back across borders and return to India.

Back home, Satya and Ankur confront the trauma of their past in the house where they last saw their parents. The film closes on a quiet, somber note: Satya has endured, fought for her brother, and carried the weight of what she was willing to do to keep him safe. The story lingers on the cost of protection and the strength it takes to face memories that never truly go away, even when safety is finally within reach.