Farhan Akhtar and Annu Kapoor team up to con Italy’s art world in the trailer for Anand Surapur’s The Fakir of Venice, which was released on Thursday. Akhtar’s Adi is hired to find a holy man who can bury himself in sand as part of a live art performance at a gallery in Italy. Adi, however, decides to pass off an alcoholic Mumbai slum resident (Kapoor) as the fakir. Things do not go according to plan, as the film’s trailer suggests.

“It is the story of a strange relationship...between two characters who are brought together to carry out a deception,” says the official synopsis. “To pull it off, they must learn to shed the layers of deceit, and move towards understanding themselves, and each other.”

The much-delayed film will finally be released on January 18.

Written by Rajesh Devraj (Gold) with a story by Homi Adajania (Finding Fanny, Cocktail), the film was premiered at the Indian Film Festival in Los Angeles in 2009. Its theatrical release had been stalled for a decade over “production issues”, Surapur told IANS
in an earlier interview. This was Akhtar’s first acting role. The film’s music is by AR Rahman.

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The Fakir of Venice (2019).