The movie ‘Highway’ had created a big buzz and a hype among Nepali youths before its release. Probably, ‘Highway’ is the first movie successful in creating such a big buzz before it’s release. It sure is critically aclaimed and is the first Nepali movie to be featured in Berlin International Film Festival.

Thanks to publicity and talks, the audience had a huge expectation from the movie. After the public release of the movie, majority of the audience think that the buzz and publicity was over hyped.

Few reasons ‘Highway’ was successful in creating such a big hype are:

• Highway’s story is based on a common problem of Nepal, but somewhat awkward in the outside world. Such strike and closure (Nepal Bandha) is unheard of in the outside world. So, the story is purely Nepali and there is nothing borrowed from Hollywood or Bollywood movies.
• Highway features well known and talented actors who had already won the heart of audience from their previous movies.
• Highway was officially screened in one of the world’s leading film festivals, the Berlin International Film Festival. A record in itself for a Nepali movie.
• Highway had collected $33,647 from fund raising campaign. The main motto of the campaign was to bring international level editing and sound designs to the movie.
• Deepak Rauniyar’s short films was liked by audience and he had managed to create hope from his debut feature film.

Keeping up to the expectation is not easy and with it’s public release on Friday July 20, it won’t take long to know if it proves to be a successful movie or not. Our movie reviewer Raunak however thinks that the movie ‘Highway’ is not up to the expectation. Although Deepak Rauniyar has tried an appreciable new concept, the experiment has failed.

Sorry Deepak Rauniyar, most of the general public has found it an underwhelming art movie! May be you are a bit ahead of time!