Recently, Pakistani distributors reportedly refused filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar’s Calendar Girls fearing backlash from their Censor Board for an objectionable dialogue in the movie.
Now, their Ministry of Culture has sent a letter to the Censor Board stating that it won’t issue a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to the film. Consequently, the Censor Board officials, who were supposed to watch the movie on Wednesday (September 23), weren’t able to issue it a clearance certificate.
As a result of these developments, the film, which releases in India on September 25, won’t open in cinemas in the neighbouring country. According to the film’s overseas distributor Sajjan Damani, “We had applied for the censor certificate clearance through one of the Pakistani distributors but their Ministry of Culture refused to issue the NOC only on the basis of watching the trailer. They have taken objection to a dialogue in the film – ‘Pakistani ladkiyaan bhi utne hi bold kaam karti hain jitni baaki ladkiyaan karti hain, balki kabhi kabhi uss se zyada bhi’ -spoken by Avani Modi who plays Nazneen Mallik, a Pakistani aspiring to become a supermodel.