After much anticipation and wait, Anupam Kher shared the trailer of his upcoming film The Accidental Prime Minister on social media on Thursday afternoon.
Based on Sanjaya Baru’s eponymous 2014 memoir, the 2.43-minute video shows Manmohan Singh—who served as India’s Prime Minister from 2004 to 2014—as a man caught in the insidious party politics of Congress, that largely used him as a puppet to warm the PMO’s chair until Rahul Gandhi’s succession.
In the trailer, both Kher and Akshaye Khanna are in excellent form as PM Singh and Baru, the journalist and policy analyst who worked as his media adviser from 2004 to 2008, and later went on to write a book on him. From his look to body language and voice, Kher nails Singh’s mannerisms to the T.
Kher took to Instagram hours before trailer launch to thank Khanna for being a part of the ambitious project. Sharing a slow-motion video of them from the film’s set, he wrote, “Dear @akshaye_khanna!! I know I will get many opportunities to thank you but today being the release of our trailer of #TheAccidentalPrimeMinister I want to say that you have been an amazing and most giving co actor. Your brilliance rubbed on me and it helped me bring out my best. You are an inspiration.”
Comparing Singh with Mahabharata’s noble but unlucky warrior Bhishma, the trailer teases at several controversies, including the nuclear deal and the Kashmir issue, that proved to be major points of conflict between Singh and the Congress.
Directed by Vijay Gutte, the political drama features German actor Suzanne Bernert as Sonia Gandhi, Arjun Mathur as Rahul Gandhi and Aahana Kumra as Priyanka Gandhi.
With screenplay by Vijay Gutte, Mayank Tewari, Karl Dunne and Aditya Sinha, the film is slate to release on January 11, 2019, alongside the Vicky Kaushal’s Uri: The Surgical Strike.
Watch the trailer here: