Ms. Laapataa: Director of “Burqa City” says he is “shocked” by the similarities between his short film and “Laapataa Ladies”
Biplab Goswami wrote the story of Kiran Rao’s Lapataa Ladies. The feature film was released in 2024 and is the official entrance to the 2025 Academy Awards in India.
Brack said he didn’t know the existence of “Ms. Laapataa” until Thursday, April 3.
“When I found out I was both shocked and sad, especially because I knew the film had a huge success in India and was even listed for the Oscar. The filmmaker said in an interview with IFP that it was published hours before Goswami broke the silence of the controversy.
He added: “First, even before watching the movie, I was surprised at the distance of the tone of my short film from my short film. Then I watched the movie and I was surprised and shocked to see that many aspects of my short film were clearly present despite the fact that this story has adapted to Indian culture.”
He said he also hopes to have a discussion with the production team of “Laapataa Ladies”, which is backed by Aamir Khan Productions, Rao’s Kindling Pictures and Jio Studios’ Jyoti Deshpande. In “Burqa City”, a newly married man starts looking for his wife after she is mistaken for another woman in Burqa. Similarly, “Laapataa Ladies” follows Deepak in search of his new bride, who accidentally exchanges with another lady in Ghoonghat on the train.
According to Bracq, “Burqa City” was written in 2017, filmed in February 2018, and aired at music festivals around the world in 2019.
The writer and director talks from several plot points to the plot twist at the end, and there is a “exhaust list” of similarities between the two films.
He added: “More broadly, the film conveys similar messages about women’s liberation and feminism.”
Goswami said in a statement posted on his official Instagram page that the allegations were totally “untrue.”
The author said he first outlined a detailed overview of “Laapataa Ladies” with the Work Title “Two Brides” on July 3, 2014, and outlined the entire story with the “Two Brides” work title.
“On June 30, 2018, I registered a full-length script ‘Two Brides’ with SWA…Our story, characters and dialogue are 100% original. Any allegations of plagiarism are totally untrue. These allegations undermine my efforts as a writer, but the relentless efforts of the entire filmmaking team,” he wrote.
