Two years in the past, an Indian traveller to Egypt fighting a fund switch acquired assist from an unlikely supply —a fan of Shah Rukh Khan within the nation of the pyramids. Ashwini Deshpande, a instructor on the Ashoka University in Sonepat, Haryana, was making journey preparations for her household’s go to to Egypt when she encountered a snag within the wire switch. Deshpande was relieved when the journey agent in Cairo instructed her she might pay him later. Because she was from the nation of Shah Rukh Khan. 

The testy encounter and its blissful ending, in addition to Shah Rukh Khan’s heat response on the then Twitter, resembled the plot of a Bollywood blockbuster. It additionally revealed a conventional affinity with Hindi cinema for movie loving Egyptians. The African continent’s earliest movie producing nation, Egypt harbours a decades-long habit for films centered on drama and music and dance made in Mumbai. Bollywood superstars like Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Kajol, Kareena Kapoor and Katrina Kaif are family names in a rustic that doesn’t even share the identical language. When the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Pathaan was launched theatrically in Egypt  final yr, it broke the field workplace file for a Hindi movie within the North African nation.

Focus on household

“Pathaan earned 1.5 million Egyptian pounds (approximately `40 lakh), which was a record for an Indian film in Egypt,” says Mohammad Hussain, head of content material on the Arab Cinema Centre, an Egypt-based initiative to advertise Arab cinema around the globe. “In the ’70s and ’80s, Indian movies were No. 1 at box office, ahead of Hollywood films,” provides Hussain. “When I am watching an Indian film, I need a moment to realise it is not an Egyptian film. The subjects in movies of both Egypt and India focus on family. Even with contemporary cinema it is the same in drama and action movies,” he says.

The field workplace success of Pathaan final yr was adopted by the success of Hindi movies like Gandhi Godse: Ek Yudh by Rajkumar Santoshi, Tiger 3 starring Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif and Shah Rukh Khan’s personal Jawan and Dunki. “In the early ’90s when Amitabh Bachchan came to the Cairo International Film Festival, people were lining up at the venue to get a glimpse of the Indian superstar,” says Alaa Amin of MAD Solutions, a serious distributor of Arab movies within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) area. “The Indian hero can do anything—he can act, dance and fight. He is my hero too, it is simple,” provides Amin, who grew to become a Shah Rukh Khan fan after watching My Name is Khan. “My mother doesn’t get up from her seat for three hours if she is watching a Bollywood film on television,” he says. El Sayed Baelawy, a resort administration graduate from Luxor, a favorite vacation spot for overseas vacationers in Egypt, echoes the sentiment of Amin: “I watched movies of Amitabh Bachchan as a child with my parents. Cinemas in Luxor, Cairo, Aswan and Alexandria screened many Indian films then.”

Egypt, which hosts the MENA area’s oldest movie industry, first got here throughout Hindi cinema within the ’40s when Hindi films had been travelling to far corners of the world, particularly in Asia and Africa. Incidentally, the traditional Egyptian port metropolis of Alexandria was the primary cease after Mumbai when the primary movement photos by Lumiere brothers had been on a worldwide tour in 1896. In the ’70s and ’80s, Hindi movies had been commonly beamed into Egyptian houses from state-run tv networks, a interval nonetheless remembered by extraordinary individuals who grew up watching films starring Amitabh Bachchan, the Indian equal of Omar Sharif, the best-known Egyptian actor. Sharif’s early Egyptian movies had been strikingly just like the wealthy girl-poor boy dramas of the neorealism period in Hindi cinema. Faten Hamama, one other Egyptian appearing legend, was typically in comparison with Nargis, and the good-looking hero Hussein Fahmy to Rajesh Khanna. The Egypt-India display screen romance ended within the ’90s when import of Indian movies was restricted by the Egyptian authorities to guard the home movie business. The restrictions had been lifted in 2013, and Egyptians welcomed Bollywood again with SRK’s Chennai Express.

Return of Bollywood

“There are a lot of similarities between Indian and Egyptian cultures. You feel you are much closer than the distance because of the affinity to each other’s culture,” says Delhi-based Shaji Mathew, the producer of such award-winning Malayalam movies as S Durga and Nani. “The Egyptian people are not ready to move to conversation with the next person when they hear you are from India,” provides Mathew, a visitor on the recently-concluded El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt the place Whispers of Fire & Water, a characteristic movie produced by him was a part of the official choice within the worldwide competitors class.

“Egyptians used to watch Bollywood films regularly in the ’70s and ’80s. Some people would even sing Hindi songs. Both Egyptian and Indian films in those decades talked about lower classes and their suffering that appealed to the masses,” says Cairo-based Egyptian movie critic Hani Mustafa. “Most people watch Bollywood cinema today on television,” provides Mustafa. “For Egyptian film lovers, Indian superstars were bigger than Hollywood superstars. They favoured Indian films over Hollywood films,” says Arab Cinema Centre’s Hussain. “In 2023, Bollywood movies are returning to their previous levels of box office success,” he provides. 

Faizal Khan is a freelancer