In 2019 , Bhatt launched her own production company named Eternal Sunshine Productions . Her first film appearance that year was 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 , '' Gully Boy '' emerged as Bhatt 's highest-grossing release . Her next release , the ensemble period drama '' Kalank '' , marked her 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 , and in preparation , she watched the films '' Mughal-e-Azam '' ( 1960 ) and '' Umrao Jaan '' ( 1981 ) to learn the body language of women from the era , and to better her Urdu-speaking skills , she watched the Pakistani television series '' Zindagi Gulzar Hai '' . Namrata Joshi of '' The Hindu '' bemoaned that the film favoured visual grandeur over plot but took note of how much Bhatt stood out among the ensemble cast . It did not perform well at the box office
69th Berlin International Film Festival
69th Berlin International Film Festival
Alia Bhatt