'Casablanca' to be remade by Bollywood

The setting is not Rick's Café in Nazi-controlled Morocco but a restaurant in southern India, and the conflict is not the Second World War but the current ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.

But fans of the movie Casablanca may recognise one or two similarities – the hard-bitten restaurateur who risks everything to help his former lover and her husband, the drama of smouldering human passion played out against a backdrop of senseless violence in which the problems of three people do not amount to a hill of beans.

The makeover of the 1942 classic is being undertaken by Indian filmmaker Rajeev Nath, who is remaking Casablanca as a Malayalam-language film. Filming is due to begin next month, with some of the scenes being shot in Sri Lanka, the location of a long and bloody civil war between government forces and Tamil separatists. Other parts of the movie will be filmed in Kerala in southern India.

It isn't the first time a Hollywood classic has been given an Indian makeover. In 1982, Bollywood director Raj N Sippy released Satte Pe Satta, his version of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

In the original Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz, Humphrey Bogart played club owner Rick Blaine, while Ingrid Bergman played his former lover Ilsa Lund. In Nath's version, entitled Ezham Mudra, Malayalam actor Suresh Gopi will play the part of a diplomat-turned-restaurateur who helps his former girlfriend and her husband – both Tamil separatists – escape from India. Bollywood actress Mandira Bedi will reprise the role of Ilsa.

"My film will be a tribute to the original," Nath, 55, said last week. Such is his devotion to the original he even intends to premiere his film in the Moroccan coastal city where the classic was set. It is due to be completed by 2008.

While Nath will use Sri Lanka's civil conflict as the backdrop for his film, he claims to be making no political point about the fighting, which has killed an estimated 70,000 people since 1983 and around 4,500 in the last year alone. "It is neither against nor in support of their cause," he said.

Yet the film is likely to have considerable impact in southern India, where more than 60 million Indian Tamils live and which has complicated political and military links to the conflict. Many members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Tamil Tigers, have taken refuge in southern India throughout the conflict. Officially a ceasefire is still in place, but in recent months fighting has restarted and government forces have shifted the rebels out of eastern strongholds they had held for many years.

The title of Nath's film, Ezham Mudra, translates as "the Seventh Seal". But the director insists it is a tribute solely to Casablanca and not the 1957 film by the late Ingmar Bergman.

"It will be set in the present day," he said. "I have consulted people who know the background. I am not in any way commenting on Tamil militancy ... whether it is good or bad. I am only using it as the backdrop to tell my story."