SRK not inaugurating the Kolkata Film Festival

West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya recently announced at a press conference that the week long 14th Kolkata Film Festival would flag off from November 10. Reportedly, he had invited Bollywood’s superstar Shah Rukh Khan to inaugurate the Festival. According to sources, Buddhadeb chose SRK to make the event a high profile one in order to take the attention away from the Nadigram carnage and also to tide over the Nano setback.

A source said, “Shah Rukh was invited to inaugurate the Kolkata Film Festival this year. However the governing bodies of the film festival disapproved of the choice and questioned as to why they should have Shah Rukh Khan inaugurate it.”

When we asked Shah Rukh whether he would be inaugurating the festival, he replied, “No. I am not as I will be busy shooting the last song for Aditya Chopra’s Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and the timings couldn’t be worked out.”
It’s a loss for all the SRK fans in Kolkata especially as Shah Rukh Khan’s popularity had soared tremendously amongst the public courtesy his Indian Premier League team Kolkata Knight Riders. The actor would have continued his association with the state had he had accepted the invitation.

The eight-day cinematic extravaganza will include the screening of 276 recently released films from all over the globe. The festival will have 17 Indian entries, 44 short-films, eight documentaries and seven children’s films. A hundred foreign films from 62 countries will also be included, of which the majority will be Latin American films.