1 day Ago
The 2024 Bollywood movie, Laapataa Ladies directed by Kiran Rao is dealing with plagiarism issues after social media users found it resembling with the Arabic short film, 'Burqa City'. The Bollywood film was India's official entry to the Oscars 2025 in the Best Foreign Language Film category but failed to secure a spot in the final nomination list. Now a video of a scene from Burqa City is going viral on social media.
Netizens have spotted some similarities from Laapataa Ladies in the Arabci film. Taking to the X account, a social media user uploaded a 56-second video of a scene from the 2019 short Arabic film 'Burqa City' showing a man who is at the shopping mall with his wife in a burqa, unintentionally went home with a different woman who was also dressed in a black burqa. Netizens were quick to spot this similarity with the Laapaata Ladies scene where the lead cast Deepak unknowingly takes home Jaya during a train journey instead of his wife Phool.
Ever since the video went viral, it has garnered over 600k views. Several users have questioned the originality of the Bollywood film. One user wrote, 'So what will you call it? Inspiration or Copy?', however, another user expressed his views on how Laapaata Ladies conveniently shifted from a Muslim to a Hindu context in India just to fit a narrative.
He wrote, 'It screams duplicity and sad to see copied/ inspired work like Laapataa Ladies presented as original for the Oscars. They also conveniently shifted from a Muslim to Hindu context in India just to fit a narrative feels disingenuous and unfair'. The Bollywood film is produced by Kiran Rao, and Jyoti Deshpande.
The Hindi-language film features debutants Nitanshi Goel, Pratibha Ranta and Sparsh Shrivastava in the lead roles. The film's cast also includes Ravi Kishan, Chhaya Kadam and Satendra Soni..
