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Sanjay Dutt-Bipasha Basu starrer Lamhaa, which releases worldwide on Friday has been banned in the Middle East. The movie, which deals with unrest in Kashmir, will not be screened in Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and Oman, as the UAE Censorship Board believes the subject is highly objectionable.
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The news alongside Pakistan’s reported ban on Tere Bin Laden, which features a look-alike of Al Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden.
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Bips is furious. “Ban on an honest film? What happened to the freedom of expression?” she questioned. Producer Bunty Walia is disappointed, too. “I still don’t know what the objectionable content is. The Indian censor board has passed the film, which proves that we have not crossed any lines. The Middle East is the third biggest overseas market for Hindi films. We’ll suffer huge losses,” he said. Director Rahul Dholakia feels that the decision is “ridiculous”. “My movie has nothing to do with the Middle East. This is frustrating,” he says.
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About Tere Bin Laden, Masood Elahi, vice chairman of Pakistan’s Film Censor Board, said, “There was no justification to release the film in Pakistan under the present circumstances.” The film’s director, Abhishek Chaubey, however, says the movie has only “gone to the revising committee, with no clear verdict yet”.
Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt isn’t surprised. “The Middle East has a fascist mindset; their decisions are arbitrary,” he says.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Banned-baj-gaya/Article1-572764.aspx