Srijit Mukherji’s Begum Jaan Trailer with English Subtitles

I haven’t had the chance to watch Zulfiqar [Trailer] yet, but Begum Jaan is ready for its release on April 14th. The film is the Hindi remake of Mukherji’s own Rajkahini [Trailer], which was shot in Bengali and came out in 2015— I was a really big fan of it [it managed to crack my Top30], and Rituparna Sengupta was one of my top female performances that year.

Begum Jaan follows the lives of a group of women who live (and work) at a brothel that sits in the splitting line of India and Pakistan, during Partition. Unlike the Rajkahini promotions that focused on the film as an ensemble, the Bhatt production seems to be centered on Vidya Balan, who is taking over Rituparna’s role, as the Madam of the brothel.

The film also stars Naseeruddin Shah, Ila Arun, Gauahar Khan, Pallavi Sharda, Rajit Kapoor, Ashish Vidyarthi, Vivek Mushran, Chunky Pandey, Poonam Singh Rajput, Ridheema Tiwari, Flora Saini, Priyanka Setia, Mishti Chakraborty, Sumit Nijhawan, Pitobash and Rajesh Sharma.

A couple of days back, it was announced that Amitabh Bachchan had done the voice-over narration of the film [1].

I’m usually not big on remakes, especially of recent movies; however, India does this thing a lot being a multi-lingual nation and all. Plus, Vidya bias spotted. Everyone’s been trying to have her reach her Kahaani and The Dirty Picture heights, but she’s been sidetrack by a younger generation of actresses with age, connections and an actual thirst for acting in their favor.

The film also comes at a time when Lipstick Under my Burkha [Trailer] has come under the limelight for the decision of the CBFC (which is not supposed to stand for “censor board,” but means “Certral Board of Film Certification”) to ban the film for its content [1][2], so it’s unclear where the audience sits with content that takes place at a brothel. The trailer, so far, has already been watched over 2 million times… which is far more than the Rajkahini trailer (just over 600k views)~

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