Pakistani film 'Dancers' about young people torn over leaving home picked for Busan market

A Pakistani film about the question so many young people here are asking, should I stay or should I go?, has made it to one of Asia’s biggest film markets.

Dancers, the first feature by writer-director Eshah Shakeel, was one of 30 projects chosen for the Asian Project Market (APM) at the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea. The market ran from October 10 to 13 and drew a record 455 submissions from 44 countries this year, according to Screen Daily.

What the film is about

According to Variety, Dancers is set in a Punjab town near Lahore, where two young people bond over secret dance lessons. Paras wants to leave Pakistan. Ramza is still working out who she is, while facing a marriage that was arranged when she was a child. In the background, a new road project splits the town between people who welcome change and those who see it as a threat to tradition.

Shakeel told Variety she watched friends and relatives move abroad, and the film is her way of looking at that pull on young Pakistanis. It’s also personal: she took up dance and acting in secret because her family didn’t allow either. She is trained in contemporary dance and plans to mix it with a Punjabi dance form on screen.

The team behind it

• Eshah Shakeel (writer and director) co-founded the production company Last Shot and earlier made the web series Dheet Haddi and the short film Explicit.
• Haris Khan, her Last Shot co-founder, is producing.
• Iram Parveen Bilal, known for Josh, I’ll Meet You There and Wakhri, is also a producer.
• Waseem Mahmood, a BBC veteran and co-founder of the UK’s Pink Llama Films, is executive producer. Pink Llama has committed financing.

The script was developed at Film Independent’s Global Media Makers programme, where it was one of 20 picked from 600 applications.

Why Busan matters

The APM is where filmmakers meet investors, co-producers, festivals and sales agents. Variety reports the budget is about $443,000, the script and budget are locked, the core crew is in place and the first round of lead auditions is done. The team went to Busan to find the rest of the money and partners.

“We are not trying to make only one good film, we’re trying to build a company,” Khan told Variety.

For Pakistani cinema, getting an independent, Punjab-set story about young people and migration into a room like this is a small but real win. We’ll follow Dancers as it moves towards production.