On August 4, the long-awaited premiere of Imtiaz Ali’s latest film Jab Harry Met Sejal took place. The movie, filmed last August and September on locations in Prague, aroused considerable attention during production – and it brought Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan to Prague. As can be clearly seen in the video clip for one of the film’s songs Radha, Prague made a huge impression on the Indian filmmaker. The Prague Castle Gardens provided the backdrop for Harry and Sejal’s romantic declaration of love, rivaling the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. It’s no wonder that the song already has almost 40 million views on YouTube!
“The Czech Republic, and Prague in particular, is a popular filming destination for Indian filmmakers, a fact that’s confirmed by the number of requests that come to us every week from India. After this film premieres, we’re expecting that number to rise – it will be a great advertisement for Prague,” says Pavlína Žipková of the Czech Film Commission.
Red Chillies Entertainment, one of Bollywood’s largest film studios, is behind the film’s production and distribution. The company is owned by Shah Rukh Khan himself along with his wife, Gauri, the film’s producer.
“The film, with such a strong production company behind it and a marketing campaign that’s been running for weeks now in the media and on social networks, will undoubtedly motivate a large number of Indian tourists to come visit Prague. It’s a well-known fact that they love to follow their favorite actors to filming locations. Shah Rukh Khan’s films have an average of 25 million viewers, his Facebook profile has over 23 million fans, and the trailers and videos for songs from Jab Harry Met Sejal have tens of millions of views now,” adds Žipková.
Jab Harry Met Sejal (under the working title of The Ring) was filmed in the Czech Republic over the course of 16 days. In addition to the aforementioned Castle Gardens, filming also took place at Kampa, Křížovnické náměstí, and a number of other locations in the Lesser Quarter and Old Town, as well as at the Main and Masaryk train stations. Local production services were provided by Punk Film.
Jab Harry Met Sejal is a romantic road movie – its central figures are Harry, who works in Europe as a tour guide for Indian tourists, and Sejal, who comes to Europe for a pre-wedding trip. They travel together through a number of cities (Amsterdam, Lisbon, Prague and Budapest), searching for Sejal’s lost engagement ring.
The film’s director, Imtiaz Ali, already has experience filming in the Czech Republic – he shot Rockstar here in 2010. He loves the capital city: “I am a big admirer of Prague, which is why I came here for the second time to shoot. I really like the gothic churches and monuments. It´s fascinating that it is very old and yet a very living city. It is what you would usually create in a museum, but Prague just exists like that.”
