Shahrukh Khan is rated as the biggest Bollywood star in Germany
Shah Rukh Khan, when he arrived here for the screening of his blockbuster film Om Shanti Om, as locals call it, at the ongoing Berlinale, the Berlin Film Festival.
The huge and almost uncontrollable turnout at the Berlinale of both German and non-German fans Friday night also goes to prove that Germany is shedding its negative perception of what Germans once described, not without contempt, as “exotic films”, the “dance-and-song musicals” produced by “Mumbai’s dream factories”.
Indeed, ever since German television started showing Bollywood films a few years ago, the rise in Bollywood’s popularity in Germany has been quite phenomenal. German-language Bollywood websites have started to appear and hundreds of bloggers routinely discuss in German not only Bollywood films but also the personal lives of their favourite stars.
“Shah Rukh Khan is rated as the biggest Bollywood film star in Germany, even surpassing the Big B (Amitabh Bachhan),” says Ramesh Sinha, an Indian businessman who does outsourcing for Germans and who is himself a Bollywood buff.
Shah Rukh, whose Om Shanti Om is being screened in a section called Berlinale Special, acknowledged that he may be a “big movie star” in India but he definitely was “humbled” by the atmosphere at the Berlinale.
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