Two Bangladeshi films — The Magical Men directed by Biplob Sarkar and The Silence of the Looms by Shabnam Ferdousi — have been officially selected for this year’s Asian Project Market (APM), one of the core segments of the prestigious Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) in South Korea.
The Magical Men is an international co-production involving producers from Singapore, France, India, and Bangladesh. Fran Borgia from Singapore, François D’Artema from France, and Shankhajit Biswas from India have joined forces with Bangladeshi filmmaker Biplob Sarkar to bring the project to life.
Meanwhile, The Silence of the Looms, rooted in the cultural heritage and traditional weaving history of Bangladesh, is directed by Mirza Shabnam Ferdousi. The film is produced by Rajiv Mahajan.
The Asian Project Market is one of the largest platforms in Asia for emerging filmmakers to present their works-in-development to global producers, co-producers, distributors, and investors. This year’s APM, set to take place from September 20 to 23, has selected 30 projects from 15 countries out of a record-breaking 455 submissions from 44 nations.
Themes explored in the selected projects include social inequality, gender and sexuality, family dynamics, border tensions, and war-related stories.
In a notable highlight, Bollywood star Alia Bhatt is among the producers selected this year. Her film Difficult Daughters, directed by her mother Soni Razdan, has earned a place at APM.
Other notable entries include The Last of Them Plagues, produced by Cannes-winning Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia and directed by Kunjila Maskilmani, as well as Moon by Khasi-language filmmaker Pradeep Kurbar, which recently won top honours at the Moscow International Film Festival.
