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This Week in AsiaLifestyle & Culture

Lights, camera, Covid: pandemic forces India’s moviemakers to look beyond Europe, US for places to shoot

  • Lockdowns and travel restrictions made flying abroad to shoot a film in 2020 near-impossible for all but the biggest Indian production houses
  • Europe mostly closed its borders, as did the US. But from the Middle East to Central Asia, location shooting is still available – if you know where to look

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Bollywood star Kiara Advani pictured on set in Dubai for her 2020 film ‘Laxmmi’. Photo: Handout
Hemanth Kumar
India produces more films each year than any other country on Earth – over 2,400 in 2019, according to the Central Board of Film Certification – and just as with the latest Hollywood blockbusters, big-budget Hindi, Telugu, and Tamil films are nowadays sure to feature at least some scenes shot in a foreign country.
For decades, Europe was the destination of choice for Indian movie moguls like the late Yash Chopra, who shot so many films in Switzerland that he was credited with boosting tourism to the Alpine nation – leading the country’s government to install a statue in his honour, four years after his death.

Over time, Eastern European countries emerged as more “cost-effective” options for Indian filmmakers, according to Executive Producer Saran Raparthy of Geetha Arts, who said it was possible to be “more flexible in terms of budgets and time spent on location” in destinations such as Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary, than the likes of “France, Spain, or Italy, where manpower is expensive and strict timelines” have to be adhered to.

“In tourist destinations like Rome, Paris, or Milan, it’s expensive and also hard to get permissions to block off entire streets for film shoots,” he told This Week In Asia , adding that the architecture of these places could often be replicated elsewhere in Eastern Europe and “you won’t be able to gauge the difference”.

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Coronavirus: India’s Bollywood industry hit hard in 2020 hopes for a revival

Coronavirus: India’s Bollywood industry hit hard in 2020 hopes for a revival
Then came the coronavirus pandemic, and all conventional wisdom went out the window. Lockdowns and travel restrictions made flying abroad to shoot a film all but impossible for much of 2020, with India’s film industry forced to shut down for months from March as infections spiked across the country.
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