Payal Sethi's 'Babak' Heads to Busan's Asian Project Market
Producer Khaled Homsi of Key Film is seeking international co-producers, sales agents and equity investors for the Afghan asylum seeker drama.
Payal Sethi's project 'Babak' is being presented at the Asian Project Market, part of the Busan International Film Festival's Asian Contents & Film Market, according to Variety. Producer Khaled Homsi of Key Film is in Busan seeking international co-producers, sales agents and equity investors for the film.
The project follows an Afghan asylum seeker named Babak who is pushed out of temporary housing in Germany to make room for Ukrainian refugees. The film is at treatment stage, with Sethi writing the screenplay's first draft backed by an Asian Cinema Fund Screenplay Grant awarded in July. The team is applying for German public funding.
Origins of the Story
Sethi began writing 'Babak' after reading reports of Afghan refugees being moved out of temporary shelters as Germany took in large numbers of Ukrainians escaping the war. The story draws on Rabindranath Tagore's 'Kabuliwala', which Sethi read as a child, and on her grandfather, who moved from Lahore to Calcutta at the partition of India and Pakistan.
The project was earlier developed at the B3 HessenLab and took part in the EFM Fiction Toolbox. Sethi's separate project 'Kurinji' received the Kompagnon Fellowship from Berlinale Talents and Perspektive Deutsches Kino in 2022, and won the Co-Production Award at the NFDC Film Bazaar in Goa in 2024. That Indo-French-German co-production is backed by the CNC's Aide aux Cinémas du Monde and MFG Baden-Württemberg and will shoot in Kerala in December.
Quick answers
What is 'Babak' about?
The film follows an Afghan asylum seeker named Babak who is pushed out of temporary housing in Germany to make room for Ukrainian refugees.
What stage is 'Babak' at?
The project is at treatment stage, with Payal Sethi writing the screenplay's first draft backed by an Asian Cinema Fund Screenplay Grant awarded in July.
What is Khaled Homsi looking for in Busan?
The Key Film producer is seeking international co-producers, sales agents and equity investors for 'Babak'.