Written by Motwane and Kashyap, the film stars debutante Rajat Barmecha, Ronit Roy, Aayan Boradia, Ram Kapoor, Manjot Singh, and Anand Tiwari.

Seventeen-year-old Rohan is expelled from the Bishop Cotton boarding school in Shimla with three of his friends (Vikram, Benoy, and Maninder) after they are caught watching a pornographic film outside campus in the middle of the night.

Bhairav forces him to run every morning (racing him the last leg) and work at his metalworking factory and attend engineering classes at the local university.

Rohan impresses the hospital employees, including doctors and nurses, with his stories and poems and discovers that Arjun was actually beaten by the angered Bhairav after he lost the contract.

Announcing that he's going to remarry again, Bhairav decides to send Arjun to boarding school and have Rohan quit college to work full-time at the factory.

He comes home to find his future stepmother and her relatives in the house and learns that Arjun is leaving for boarding school the following day.

The next morning, Rohan returns home and finds Arjun waiting outside while Bhairav is gone to get an autorickshaw to send him to the boarding school.

While working on Devdas as an assistant director in 2002, Vikramaditya Motwane saw Sweet Sixteen (directed by Ken Loach, about a troubled teenager who sets out to raise money for a new home).

[16] Mahendra J. Shetty was Udaan's director of photography, and Dipika Kalra was the film's editor; Aditya Kanwar was its production designer.

[19] The film featured Ronit Roy, Aayan Boradia, Ram Kapoor, Manjot Singh and Anand Tiwari in supporting roles.

[20] The soundtrack album had seven songs, including one instrumental; Joi Barua, Neuman Pinto, Bhattacharya, Trivedi, Mohan Kannan, Raman Mahadevan, Bonnie Chakraborty, Kashyap, Kshitij Wagh, Tochi Raina, Shriram Iyer and Nikhil D'Souza provided vocals.

[25][13] Kashyap released a letter he wrote to his parents in 1993 (when he left home and went to Mumbai),[26] and he and Motwane destroyed a car—imitating a scene in the film—for a promotion.

"[35] Kaveere Bamzai of India Today described the film as "an extraordinary story told without veering into the maudlin": "It's a tightly controlled drama without any melodrama.

"[36] Pratim D. Gupta said, "For every rupee you have wasted on big, bad Bolly noise, you must back this beautiful and brave voice.

"[39] Blessy Chettiar of Daily News and Analysis praised Barmecha's performance, calling him a "raw talent" who plays "a wide emotional range with panache.

"[40] Namrata Joshi of Outlook praised Roy's performance as the father and wrote, "It's a sharp, concentrated look at a troubled father-son relationship, how each of them, and the people around them, cope with their mercurial ways.

[43] Although Sonia Chopra of Sify called Roy a "real discovery", she opined that some scenes appeared "inconsistent and a bit too cute for a cutting-edge film of this nature.

"[44] Baradwaj Rangan observed that Udaan is "at heart, a feel-good fairy tale", and praised Roy's multidimensional character.

[45] Alissa Simon of Variety was more critical, however: "Earnest, predictable, conventionally-crafted Udaan brings nothing new to the coming-of-age genre in this tale of a fraught relationship between a sensitive teen and his abusive, controlling father, which adopts the style of popular Indian melodrama.

"[46] Rachel Saltz of The New York Times felt that the film "covers familiar first-film ground with emotional conviction and freshness.