Rajkummar Rao’s Newton, which has won over the critics, has been selected as India’s official to the Oscars. However, an exclusive report by the NDTV stated that Amit Masurkar’s film bears close resemblance to an Iranian film Secret Ballot.
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The premise of both the films is similar. Newton is set in the Maoist-controlled jungles of Chhattisgarh and is about how a young presiding election officer trying to conduct a free and fair election there. Pankaj Tripathi plays an Army general who is skeptical about the polling.
Secret Ballot has a female protagonist who is also sent to a remote area to conduct polling where she comes across a soldier who is not willing to help her.
“I remember after I wrote the script just before I was going to shoot, a friend told me about Secret Ballot. Since the film was on YouTube I watched bits and pieces but that was very different I felt,” Masurkar told NDTV.
Watch the Secret Ballot trailer here: