By the time I arrived in Berlin this past weekend, Shah Rukh Khan [Images] had left town.

"He gave us two and half days," one of the programming directors of the 58th Berlinale International Film Festival told me. As has been reported in the press in India, Khan was at the festival for German premiere of his Red Chilies Entertainment production Om Shanti Om. The film opens in Germany [Images] in March.


But Khan left quite an impression on the press and the festival goers. The day after the premiere at the Kino International, the Berlin press was flooded with the coverage of the opening, including the red carpet, where Khan was seemingly mobbed by fans. And the headlines spoke it all (one does not have to understand German to get a sense of these headlines): "Der Mega-Hyper-Superstar" and "Der Beauch von King Khan [Images] sorgt fur Fan-Hysterie" (the lead of this article compared Khan with Brad Pitt [Images] and Tom Cruise [Images]).


Khan certainly has a big following in Germany and in Europe. In comparison, very few Americans know anything about Khan or for that matter, Bollywood films.


I also met a couple of Khan's fans who had stood in the line for five hours to buy tickets for the premiere of Om Shanti Om. But the tickets were sold out in five minutes, they told me. They managed to catch the film at another large theatre, Kino Urania.

"Girls came with handbags with Shah Rukh's picture," one fan said. "The audience laughed at the jokes and the songs."


But apart from the Khan hysteria and his announcement that he was set to launch an action adventure project with this production house, India had a rather small presence at this year's Berlinale. There are a couple of shorts, a Tamil film Paruthiveeran [Images], directed by Ameer Sulthan, and a well-attended conversation and screening of experimental films from India.