Bollywood Slips On Bad Idea Jeans, Prepares DEAR FRIEND HITLER For Cannes

Okay, well, even for India this is strange news.  Today in Berlin, Amrapali Media Vision launched their first feature film project, Dear Friend Hitler, starring Raghuvir Yadav as Adolf Hitler and Neha Dhupia as Eva Braun.  The project will be entirely shot in Hindi, and on the whole seems like a really terrible idea.

Dear Friend Hitler has an appropriately spotty history.  It was first launched last spring, with well-respected Bollywood actor and acting teacher Anupam Kher in the lead role.  Immediately the film raised eyebrows in the West because initially the director wasn't terribly clear about his motives and made it seem like the film was going to be almost some kind of buddy comedy between Gandhi and Hitler.  News agents in the West picked up the story, and Anupam Kher came under immediate and heavy fire from fans and friends to drop the project.  Initially, via Twitter, he defended the film saying that he'd read the script and it wasn't all laughs, though his fans were not convinced.  Eventually he gave in and dropped out of the project in the summer, prompting first time director Rakesh Ranjan Kumar, to seek out a replacement, one he found in Raghuvir Yadav.  Now the film seems to be underway, and the production company is prepping it for viewing in the Cannes market.

Very few details about the plot have made their way to the surface.  The first synopsis sounded like a Bollywood remake of The Downfall (Der Untergang), with cameras following Adolf and Eva in their final days.  Since then, the film seems to have decided on a more fictional route, using real historical documents, in this case letters written by Gandhi to Hitler attempting to convince Der Fuhrer to avert the war, and extrapolated some kind of relationship between the two mismatched ideologies.  Again, sounds like a really horrible, terrible idea.  I've already come across a few scattered media reports describing song and dance numbers to be inserted in to the film, so it won't be strictly arthouse, they are trying to make some money with this one.

I've been trying to unravel the details about this and they are really confusing.   Here's what is clear factually about Dear Friend Hitler:

• The film will be about Hitler's last days.
• It will feature Indian actors in all of the roles, both Indian and German characters.
• The film will focus on Hitler's relationships with both Gandhi and Eva Braun.
• There will be songs.
• The writer of the film, Nalin Ranjan Singh, will also be portraying Joseph Goebbels onscreen.


• I don't see how this ends well.