Burqa City director Fabrice Bracq reacts on 'Laapataa Ladies': "I was both shocked and saddened"

Kiran Rao's 'Laapataa Ladies' has been making headlines recently, but definitely not for the right reasons. The film which was India's official entry to the Oscars 2025 has been alleged with the serious offence of plagiarising. It was only recently that netizens started to point out the similarities between 'Laapataa Ladies' and an Arabic film called 'Burqa City'. Internet users claimed that the storylines of both films are oddly similar.

A video of the 2019 film 'Burqa City' directed by Fabrice Bracq is doing rounds on the internet and that was the major tipping point for this controversy to begin. Now, the director of Burqa City has commented on the similarities between the two films. 

Fabrice Bracq directed 'Burqa City,' which is an Arabic short film that was released in 2019. The director spoke to IFP recently about his thoughts on the similarities between the films. He said that he was 'shocked and saddened' by the similarities that he happened to notice. The director also admitted that he had not watched 'Laapataa Ladies' till netizens started pointing out the similarities.

The director told the publication that the first similarity that he noticed was that the storylines of both films indeed are close to one another. Talking about other similarities, he said, a "kind, loving, naive husband" and a "violent and despicable" husband, a "corrupt, violent" policeman, but the biggest similarity was the picture of the veiled woman on the poster. 

He said, "There's also similarity in the plot twist at the end, where we learn that the woman deliberately chose to run away from her abusive husband—a key narrative element in Burqa City." The director revealed that his short film was written in 2017, was shot in 2018, and started doing the rounds of festivals in 2019. He also said that the film was shown at festivals in Kolkata and Auroville in 2020. 

Asked about what he felt like after watching Kiran's 'Laapataa Ladies,' he said, "When I found out, I was both shocked and saddened, especially since I understood that the film had been a huge success in India and was even shortlisted for the Oscars. As for me, I had hopes – and was in discussions – to adapt Burqa City into a feature film. But is that even possible now?"

 featured Pratibha Ranta, Nitanshi Goel, Sparsh Shrivastav, Ravi Kishan, Chhaya Kadam in pivotal roles. The film was produced by Aamir Khan, Kiran Rao, and Jyoti Deshpande under the banner of .