DUBAI: These Indian blockbusters were shot in various locations across the Middle East, proving that Bollywood’s love affair with the region has a storied history.
‘Bharat’
The cast and crew of the upcoming Bollywood film, including actor Salman Khan, just wrapped up their shoot in Abu Dhabi after an intensive 15 days of filming across three locations.
Ek Tha Tiger
This 2012 film starring Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif was shot in Cuba, Hong Kong, Thailand and Ireland, while the production crew spent two months in Istanbul.
‘Phantom’
Political thriller Phantom starred Saif Ali Khan and Katrina Kaif and was partly shot in Lebanon, including in Beirut, Khandaq Al-Ghameeq and the mountain town of Kfardebian.
‘Happy New Year’
Bollywood heavyweights Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Abhishek Bachchan and Jackie Shroff shot this 2014 film in Dubai at Atlantis, The Palm.
‘Once Upon a Time in Mumbai Dobaara’
The 2013 gangster movie starring Akshay Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha and Imran Khan was shot in various locations in Oman, including the Shangri-La’s Barr Al-Jissah Resort & Spa.
‘Krrish 3’
A song in the movie was shot in locations across Jordan, including in the Dead Sea area. The film starred Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut.
The Six: Bollywood films shot in the Middle East
The Six: Bollywood films shot in the Middle East
‘One in a Million’: Syrian refugee tale wows Sundance
PARK CITY: As a million Syrians fled their country's devastating civil war in 2015, directors Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes headed to Turkey where they would meet a young girl who encapsulated the contradictions of this enormous migration.
In Ismir, they met Isra'a, a then-11-year-old girl whose family had left Aleppo as bombs rained down on the city, and who would become the subject of their documentary "One In A Million," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday.
For the next ten years, they followed her and her family's travels through Europe, towards Germany and a new life, where the opportunities and the challenges would almost tear her family apart.
There was "something about Isra'a that sort of felt to us like it encapsulated everything about what was happening there," MacInnes told an audience at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on Friday.
"The obvious vulnerability of her situation, especially as being a child going through this, but that at the same time, she was an agent.
"She wasn't sitting back, waiting for other people to save her. She was trying to fight, make her own way there."
The documentary mixes fly-on-the-wall footage with sit-down interviews that reveal Isra'a's changing relationship with Germany, with her religion, and with her father.
It is this evolution between father and daughter that provides the emotional backbone to the film, and through which tensions play out over their new-found freedoms in Europe -- something her father struggles to adjust to.
Isra'a, who by the end of the film is a married mother living in Germany, said watching her life on film in the Park City theatre was "beautiful."
And having documentarists follow her every step of the way as she grew had its upsides.
"I felt like this was something very special," she told the audience after the screening. "My friends thought I was famous; it made making friends easier and faster."
