1 day Ago By Tanmayi Savadi
Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies was chosen as India’s official entry to the Oscars 2025. However, the film didn’t make it to the final race. Though critically acclaimed, the rural drama starring Pratibha Ranta, Nitanshi Goel and Sparsh Shrivastava was questioned for originality.
Once again, Laapataa Ladies is being accused of plagiarism. Laapataa Ladies a copy of Burqa City?The internet noticed similarities between Kiran’s directorial and an Arabic film titled Burqa City. Viral clips are acting as testimony to the plagiarism claim.
Burqa City’s plot revolves around a newlywed man who searches for his wife after she gets replaced by another woman wearing the burqa.ALSO READ: Laapataa Ladies Oscars 2025 Entry: When Ananth Mahadevan Claimed Kiran Rao's Film Was Similar To His Ghoonghat Ke Pat KholAbout Burqa CityBurqa City is a 20-minute Arabic comedy directed by Fabrice Bracq. Starring Omar Mebrouk, Chadia Amajod, Jalal Altawil and Noman Hosni, it released in 2019.
According to its synopsis, the film is set in a city in the Middle East, ‘where the full burqa is imposed on women, a young married couple gets into an argument. When everything seems to be resolved, however, the young man discovers he has come home with the wrong woman’. Burqa City can be watched on Amazon Prime Video.
Netizens reactAngry netizens reacted to plagiarism allegations. One person commented on X, “There is nothing Original about Bollywood anymore. All inspiration comes from wine-filled-movie-nights-parties.
If you know, you know!” Another wrote, “Nothing that Bollywood produces seems to be an original work of art. They are all brazenly copy pasted from somewhere else, shamelessly billed as original work.” An X user wrote, “So what will you call it? Inspiration or Copy?”Kiran Rao's Lapata Ladies, India's official entry to the Oscars and projected as an original work, actually seems heavily inspired by a 2019 short film titled Burqa City.
Set in Middle East, the 19 min film follows a newlywed man whose wife gets exchanged due to identical...
pic.twitter.com/b7GcHN2MmI— THE SKIN DOCTOR (@theskindoctor13) March 31, 2025 Prior to this, actor-director Ananth Mahadevan claimed that the story of Laapataa Ladies was quite similar to his Ghoonghat Ke Pat Khol which released in 1999.
In a previous interview with Mid-Day, Ananth said, “It seems too much of a coincidence. I have seen Laapataa Ladies, and the beginning as well as many incidents are the same. In our film, a boy from the city goes to his village to get married.
The mix-up happens at the railway station when he asks his new bride, who is in a ghunghat, to wait on a bench [while he goes looking for some information]. When he returns, he joins the wrong bride. The scene where the cop looks at the woman’s photograph and can’t make out much because she is in a ghunghat, is there in my film.
Except in my film, it’s not a cop but another character.”Dismissing Mahadevan’s claim as false, Laapataa Ladies’ writer Biplab Goswami said he wrote the script a decade ago and the film was an original creation..
