Hichki (2018) on Netflix
Naina Mathur has Tourette syndrome and has spent five years being rejected by schools. St. Notker's School hires her to teach class 9F, unruly students from a nearby slum.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb7.5/1015,642 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes54%
Trailer
Plot summary
Naina Mathur holds a Bachelor of Education and a Master of Science and wants to teach, but Tourette syndrome makes her produce uncontrollable sounds likened to hiccups, and schools have turned her down for five years. Her mother Sudha and younger brother Vinay back her; her father Prabhakar would rather she worked in a bank. St. Notker's School, her own alma mater, finally offers her a post and assigns her class 9F. The school had struggled to keep a teacher there, and Naina finds the students unruly and visibly different. Shyamlal, the peon, tells her they live in a nearby slum and were enrolled under a government quota for the underprivileged. On her first day they imitate her sounds and mock her, and she sets out to teach them interactively.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hichki (2018)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Siddharth P. Malhotra spent four years trying and failing to find a production house for Hichki; the studios told him it lacked commercial viability, asking who would watch the story of a teacher with Tourette syndrome.
- Malhotra wrote the screenplay with a male lead in mind, but producer Maneesh Sharma suggested casting an actress instead. Rani Mukerji took the part, her first acting role since Mardaani in 2014.
- To prepare, Rani Mukerji contacted Brad Cohen, whose life the character is based on, over Skype and asked him to train her so the character's motor and vocal tics appeared spontaneous and not rehearsed.
- Rani Mukerji said her husband, Aditya Chopra, was the one who thought she should play Naina Mathur, because he saw her becoming obsessed with her family life while her fans waited for her comeback. She waited until their daughter was four months old to accept the part.
