‘Safa’, ‘Jolchhobi’ selected for Film Bazaar Co-Production Market

Bangladeshi filmmakers Maksud Hossain’s first full-length feature film titled ‘Safa’ and Tanha Zafreen’s ‘Jolchhobi’ have been selected for the Co-Production Market (CPM), one of the main events of Film Bazaar in India.

A total of 20 projects from 11 countries have been selected to take part in the CPM this year scheduled for November 20-25 as announced by the organisers recently.

The selections include Blue (India, UK), Bride Without Dowry (India, Germany, Sri Lanka), Ek Mutthi Badal (My Share of Sky) (Nepal), Mirpur Express (India) and The Forgotten History (Afghanistan, Spain).

‘Safa’ is based on real life events where an adolescent girl who deals with heartbreak after her mother got severely injured in a road accident. In the story, the central character named Safa will be seen trying her best for the betterment of her mother.

Written and directed by Maksud Hossain, Barkat Hossain Polash (Verite Films) is the producer of ‘Safa’ while Arifur Rahman and Tamim Arif Abdul Majid are the executive producers. The film is both written and directed by Maksud Hossain, who earlier directed as many as 15 short films.

‘Jolchhobi’ marks the debut feature film of director Tanha Zafreen who earlier tried her hands in directing drama, advertisement, short film and documentary.

Co-written by Tanha Zafreen and Rajib Rafi, ‘Jolchhobi’ will be produced by Ashutosh Mahapatra from India and Mokhlesur R Talukder from Bangladesh.

‘Jolchhobi’ is the story of a young man who has sleep paralysis. As the story unfolds, he turns his nightmares into creative stuff. The film is inspired by true events of the director’s own life who faced sleep paralysis in her teenage.

‘Jolchhobi’ also secured the official selection under the Screenplay Lab category at the 20th Dhaka International Film Fest (DIFF) in January this year.

This year, the line-up of 20 projects is an eclectic mix of stories in Assamese, Bengali, Dari, English, German, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Portuguese, Sinhala, Tamil, and Telugu.

The selected filmmakers will be pitching their projects virtually to International and Indian producers, distributors, festival programmers, financiers, and sales agents at Open Pitch Online. On the first day of Film Bazaar Online, the pitches will be played out virtually and made available for delegates to watch in different time zones.

Film Bazaar hosted by India’s National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) is a platform exclusively created to encourage collaboration between the international and South Asian film fraternities.