The setting is not Rick's Café in Nazi-controlled Morocco but a restaurant in southern India, and the conflict is not the Second World War but the current ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.

But fans of the movie Casablanca may recognise one or two similarities – the hard-bitten restaurateur who risks everything to help his former lover and her husband, the drama of smouldering human passion played out against a backdrop of senseless violence in which the problems of three people do not amount to a hill of beans.

The makeover of the 1942 classic is being undertaken by Indian filmmaker Rajeev Nath, who is remaking Casablanca as a Malayalam-language film. Filming is due to begin next month, with some of the scenes being shot in Sri Lanka, the location of a long and bloody civil war between government forces and Tamil separatists. Other parts of the movie will be filmed in Kerala in southern India.