'Bawaal' starring Janhvi Kapoor and Varun Dhawan premiered on July 21 on Amazon Prime Video. The Nitesh Tiwari directorial got mixed reviews from critics and audiences alike. The film shows the story of a history teacher (played by Varun Dhawan) who always cares about his image and is embarrassed by his wife's (Janhvi Kapoor) epilepsy. In a major turn of events, Varun who plays Ajay Dixit travels to Europe to visit sites of World War Two and make videos to teach his students. Janhvi also accompanies him and eventually, they fall in love with each other.
As per reports, 'Bawaal' has been accused of trivialising and demeaning the deaths of millions of Jews killed during the Holocaust. In India too, several people have criticised the film for the way it has used the Holocaust in the film. It has a fantasy scene inside a gas chamber and uses Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and the Auschwitz death camp as metaphors. By using Auschwitz as a metaphor for relationship problems, Janhvi's character says in one of the scenes, “we are all a little like Hitler”.
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A report in BBC News states that a Jewish organisation has written to Amazon Prime Video asking them to remove the film from its streaming platform for its "insensitive portrayal" of the Holocaust.
On Tuesday, Jewish human rights organisation Simon Wiesenthal Center also criticised it and said in a statement that Auschwitz should not be used as a metaphor as it's a "quintessential example of man's capacity for evil".
The statement read: "By having the protagonist in this movie declare that 'Every relationship goes through their Auschwitz', Nitesh Tiwari [the director], trivialises and demeans the memory of six million murdered Jews and millions of others who suffered at the hands of Hitler's genocidal regime".
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It further stated, "If the filmmaker's goal was to gain PR [publicity] for their movie by reportedly filming a fantasy sequence at the Nazi death camp, he has succeeded".
The statement also asked the OTT giant to "stop monetising" the film and immediately remove it from its platform.
