Sonja is a waitress in a countryside restaurant in the Bernese plateau of Switzerland. Engaged to her boss, she has a secure life-plan. Until a Bollywood film crew lands up for a shoot. The highly gifted cook of the crew woos her relentlessly and soon she is faced with a dilemma — a choice between security and status on one side and passion and magic on the other...

Bollywood film crews have been coming to Switzerland for decades to shoot dream sequences or honeymoons. And now, Switzerland hits back with its own home-grown Bollywood film, Tandoori Love. Made in the Swiss German dialect and English, the film was premiered before a packed audience at the lakeside open-air theatre in Zurich last Saturday.

The film takes a comic look at the clash of two totally different, rather contrasting cultures. “I love Indian culture and its chaos,” says Oliver Paulus, writer-director of the film. “And you can imagine what happens when this chaos enters a Swiss village where everything is so perfectly organised.” He says he had often heard irate hotel and restaurant owners swear they would never again want to have an Indian film crew in their midst. But over the years this attitude has changed. People are more open-minded now and they see the advantage it brings — India is one of the fastest growing tourism markets for this country, thanks to Bollywood.

“Tandoori Love is not a Bollywood film, it is a film completely different from anything you’ve ever seen. It is presenting Bollywood to a Swiss audience in a way that can be more palatable to them” insists Paulus. Isn’t Bollywood already well accepted and understood by Swiss audiences? “No,” he says. “Bollywood film screenings are confined to Arthouse Cinema and viewed by intellectuals who have an interest in alternative cultures.” Or perhaps are watched by the immigrants comprising Turkish, East European and Middle Eastern nationalities.

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