Tere Bin Laden

Tere Bin Laden (2010)

A million dollar fake

Ali Hassan (Ali Zafar), a reporter with a downmarket TV channel in Karachi, is keen to go to USA for a better life, but his visa has been refused six times in seven years. In desperation, he gets hold of an Osama Bin Laden look alike and makes a fake Osama tape which he sells to the owner of his channel to raise money for a false identity, a new passport and better luck with US visa. As one can expect, it is far from smooth sailing for him and his friends, as they get into a series of comic situations.

Date of release
2010-07-16
TMDB
6.5 / 10 (66)
Runtime
1h 44m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Abhishek Sharma
Collection
Tere Bin Laden Collection

Casting

Interesting facts

Tere Bin Laden is a 2010 Indian Hindi-language satire comedy film produced by sisters Pooja Shetty Deora and Aarti Shetty under Walkwater Media and written and directed by debutante Abhishek Sharma. Marking the Indian film debut of Pakistani actor Ali Zafar and starring Pradhuman Singh Mall in his film debut as well, it follows an ambitious young Pakistani reporter who, in his desperation to migrate to the United States, makes a fake Osama bin Laden video using a lookalike, and sells it to TV channels. The film is a spoof on Osama Bin Laden as well as a comic satire on America's war against terror and the realities of the post-9/11 world.

Production

Abhishek Sharma was working with Pooja Shetty Deora when he developed the idea of making a film on Osama. According to him, the idea was apparently due to a "severe" headache. "I had a severe headache one day and had tied a cloth around my head, which looked like a turban. I had a lot of facial hair then. Someone commented that I looked like Osama Bin Laden. It then struck me to do a spoof on Bin Laden", he said.

For the film's cast, Sharma didn't want any "established stars or people that are easily recognizable" as the film wouldn't have the "intended effect on audience". Ali Zafar was the first one to be cast. Sharma watched his music videos and decided to give the journalist's role to him as he had the "quirkiness" and "wit" to be in a comedy film.

The film crew attempted to get the locations, costume design, and language as similar as possible to that in Pakistan, and recreated the scene of Karachi to do this. The film was shot in areas of Mumbai and Hyderabad which bore resemblance to Karachi. The costumes, hoardings in Urdu, radio sets were brought from Pakistan.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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