Hitler’s downfall gets the Bollywood treatment

A Bollywood film director is to bring the last days of Adolf Hitler to the big screen. The film, Dear Friend Hitler, will centre around the Fuhrer's relationships with his "close associates", including his girlfriend Eva Braun.

Director Rakesh Ranjan Kumar has cast an Indian megastar, Anupam Kher, as Hitler, while Neha Dhupia (above), a former Miss India, will play Braun, who married the Nazi dictator shortly before they committed suicide in a Berlin bunker.

However, anyone hoping to see goose-stepping Bhangra dancers in an Indian-style Springtime for Hitler - the fictional Nazi musical cooked up by two crooks in Mel Brooks's The Producers - will be disappointed. There are no plans for any of the spectacular musical numbers normally found in Bollywood films.

A Bollywood source suggested the film will be closer to the intense drama of the German film Downfall, when he told the Mumbai Mirror: "The film aims to take the viewer into close quarters with the enigmatic personality that Hitler was and give a glimpse into his insecurities, his charisma, his paranoia and his sheer genius."

Kher, who was cast by Kumar for what he saw as his resemblance to Hitler, is known internationally, having appeared in Bend It Like Beckham (2002), ER and Ang Lee's Lust, Caution (2007). He also once played Indian pro-independence leader Mahatma Ghandi in an Indian TV series.

The title of the film alludes to two letters that Ghandi wrote to Hitler begging his "dear friend" to prevent a war that "may reduce humanity to a savage state".

The film will also touch on the debt India apparently owes Hitler for its independence, one of Dear Friend Hitler's producers told the Times. Financially exhausted by the war effort, Britain turned inwards and began to loosen its grip on the Empire. "If we should thank anybody for Indian freedom, it should be Hitler. But just because you delve into the mind of Hitler does not mean that you condone his barbarism."

"As a leader, he was successful," adds Kumar. "Why did he lose as a human being, what were the problems, what were the issues, what were his intentions, this is what we want to show." ·