Alia Bhatt, Kani Kusruti-backed films among Indian projects selected for Busan’s Asian Project Market

CHENNAI: Indian films backed by Alia Bhatt and Kani Kusruti have been selected for this year’s Busan International Film Festival’s Asian Project Market (APM), a key platform where Asian filmmakers pitch upcoming projects to global distributors, investors, and producers, according to Deadline. The Asian Project Market will be held from September 20 to 23 alongside the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea.

Alia Bhatt’s production, ‘Difficult Daughters’, directed by her mother Soni Razdan and co-produced with her sister Shaheen Bhatt and veteran Indian indie producer Alan McAlex ('Santosh', 'Sister Midnight'), is among the 30 projects featured this year.

Malayalam actor Kani Kusruti, known for her lead role in the much-celebrated Cannes Grand Prix-winning film ‘All We Imagine As Light’, is backing ‘The Last of Them Plagues (Guptam)’, written and directed by Kunjila Mascillamani. The project is co-produced with Payal Kapadia, who directed ‘All We Imagine As Light’, actor-couple Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal, and Malayalam filmmaker Jeo Baby, known for 'The Great Indian Kitchen' and 'Kaathal - The Core'. Kunjila had earlier directed 'Asanghadithar', part of Jeo Baby’s 2022 anthology 'Freedom Fight'.

Other Indian projects selected include ‘Moon’ by three-time National Award-winning Meghalaya filmmaker Pradip Kurbah, which marks his return to Busan after his Khasi-language film ‘Iewduh’ (English: Market) won the festival’s prestigious Kim Ji-seok Award in 2019.

Also part of the line-up are: 'The Magical Men’ by Biplob Sarkar, which is an LGBTQ+ story, and ‘Lanka (The Fire)’, a psychological family drama, directed by Saurav Rai. Bangladeshi writer-director Biplob Sarkar‘s debut feature 'The Stranger' had premiered at Busan in 2023, while Saurav Rai's 'Nimtoh' (2019) had premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and won the grand jury prize at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.