Shah Rukh Khan’s Zero to close Beijing International Film Festival

The decision to programme SRK’s Zero in a prominent slot underlines the growing success which Indian films are enjoying with Chinese audiences, reports said.

Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Zero may have been panned by critics and proved to be a box office flop but the film will be the closing movie of the Beijing International Film Festival. The festival, which will run from April 13 to April 20, will open with The Composer, a forthcoming Chinese-Kazakh co-production, as its opening title.

Shah Rukh Khan played a dwarf in Zero.

The decision to programme Zero in such a prominent slot underlines the growing success which Indian films are enjoying with Chinese audiences, reports variety.com.

Directed by Aanand L. Rai, the Hindi language film released in December last year. It features SRK as a person with dwarfism in a love triangle with a scientist with cerebral palsy (actress Anushka Sharma) and a famous actress (Katrina Kaif).

The Composer is the first movie to emerge from a cooperation agreement between China and Kazakhstan under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s infrastructure-building project, the Belt and Road Initiative.

Directed by Kazakhstan’s Xirzat Yahup, it describes the life of a Chinese composer stranded in Almaty in the 1940s who strikes up a friendship with a Kazakh composer.

The festival line-up is a mix of Hollywood blockbusters (including all five “Jason Bourne” films and all four “Mad Max” titles); homage to filmmakers, including Akira Kurosawa and Alfonso Cuaron (with screenings of “Gravity” and “Children of Men”); and lesser-known works from countries including Indonesia and India.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)

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