My Name Is Khan to be screened at Berlin Film Festival

Bollywood film My Name Is Khan, starring legendary screen pair Shahrukh Khan and Kajol, will be screened at the 60th annual Berlin International Film Festival in February.

The festival, one of the oldest and most prestigious in the world, will run from February 11-21 and will feature the premiere of the Martin Scorsese film, Shutter Island, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

My Name Is Khan will release on February 12th in India and more than 40 other countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and Australia.

It will reportedly be the widest international release of a Bollywood film ever. The highly awaited picture reunites Khan and Kajol, who haven’t appeared in a film together since Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham in 2001.

The story focuses on racial profiling of Muslims in the U.S. Khan plays a man with Asperger syndrome a form of autism who’s wrongly suspected of being a terrorist. Kajol plays his wife. The film was shot in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Francisco, and Mumbai.

It was directed by famous filmmaker Karan Johar and produced by his company, Dharma Productions. In the past, Khan and Johar have collaborated on some of India’s most internationally successful films, including Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001), Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003), and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006).

My Name Is Khan was reportedly sold to Fox Star Studios last July for a record Rs. 100 crore ($21 million) the highest price ever paid by a distributor for a Bollywood film. Under the deal, Fox Star Studios a joint venture between American film studio 20th Century Fox and India’s Star Group acquired the worldwide marketing and distribution rights to the film.

It will be released in North America by Fox Searchlight Pictures, a division of 20th Century Fox, which has previously distributed many notable films about Indians, such as Bend It Like Beckham (2002), Water (2005), The Namesake (2006), and Slumdog Millionaire (2008).

In a case of life imitating art, Khan, who is Muslim, was detained and questioned by immigration officials last August at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey while he was en route to an Indian independence celebration in Chicago. The incident made headlines worldwide and outraged many Indians.