Zee Studios’ Shariq Patel On Push Into Web Series, Festival Films with Berlin selections ‘Brown’ and ‘Aatma Pamphlet’
20.02.2023 - 12:37
/ deadline.com
EXCLUSIVE: India’s Zee Studios, headed by CEO Shariq Patel, is starting to become a regular on the international film festival and TV market circuit.
The company recently attended the Rotterdam film festival, where it had Devashish Makhija’s Joram premiering in the Big Screen competition, and is now in Berlin where it has web series Brown selected for Berlinale Series Market Selects, and coming-of-age comedy drama Aatma Pamphlet premiering in Generation 14plus.
Directed by Abhinay Deo, Brown stars Karisma Kapoor as a detective and recovering alcoholic investigating the murder of a young woman from a well-connected family.
Marathi-language Aatma Pamphlet is the debut feature of Ashish Avinash Bende and tells the story of a young boy growing up amidst massive social and economic changes in 1990s India. Produced by Anand L. Rai’s Colour Yellow Productions, the film will have its world premiere at Berlin’s Zoo Palast on February 22.
The two pieces of content herald a surprising strategy for Zee Studios, one of India’s biggest content producers, best-known for blockbusters distributed in India and to the global Indian diaspora, the most recent of which, Tamil heist thriller Thunivu, was a hit over the Pongal holiday season in January.
“While we have the tentpoles that keep the studio’s top line going, we’re now also looking at some projects from an international festival and sales perspective,” says Patel, who has headed the studio since 2018.
He explains that while Zee Studios also produces films and web series for its sister OTT platform ZEE5 Global, the company has come to Berlin to sell Brown on the open market to international streamers and broadcasters: “We’re trying a new model that allows us to produce a