ISLAMABAD: Pakistani director Saim Sadiq has won the prestigious Baumi Script Development Award for “Little Men” and received a €20,000 prize to support the project’s development, the organizers announced over the weekend.
The Baumi Script Development Award is an annual prize established in 2016 to honor the legacy of Karl “Baumi” Baumgartner, a renowned film producer and distributor known for his passion for independent world cinema.
Little Men is an upcoming film project by Sadiq, who is best known for his acclaimed debut feature Joyland, which received international recognition and critical praise.
“10 years of the Baumi Script Development Award! To mark the anniversary, the €20,000 prize goes to filmmaker Saim Sadiq from Pakistan for his treatment ‘Little Men,’” the Baumi Script Development Award said in a Facebook post last week.
The film follows Nael, a Pakistani-American man living in New York City, who offers to marry his former lover from Pakistan to help her escape their crisis-stricken homeland.
As he enters into the fraudulent marriage, Nael confronts the complexities of love, loyalty and identity as he navigates the challenges of belonging to two lovers and two worlds.
On the occasion, Sadiq expressed his gratitude to the German film distribution company Pandora Film Verleih and to Film- und Medienstiftung North Rhine-Westphalia for bringing him back to Cannes.
“Big thank you Pandora Film Verleih and Film- und Medienstiftung NRW for bringing me back to Cannes and for the Baumi Award and to Edward Berger for heading the jury and for being so gracious, kind and real,” Sadiq said in a post on Instagram.
Sadiq is a Pakistani screenwriter and director who gained international recognition with Joyland, which won the Jury Prize in the ‘Un Certain Regard’ section at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
Sadiq studied anthropology at Lahore University and earned his Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University in New York City.
