World sales outfit Filmotor has acquired the global sales rights to “Hazara Town,” the debut feature documentary by Khadim Dai. The film will have its world premiere in the International Competition at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, known as IDFA.
Filmed over six years, “Hazara Town” is a “chronicle of survival, exile and the bond of family,” Filmotor said. Forced from Central Afghanistan by the Taliban in 1998, Dai’s family sought refuge in a walled enclave in Quetta, Pakistan, where the Hazara community continues to face targeted violence. Following a 2013 school bombing that killed 126 people—including Dai’s classmates—his family urged him to flee.
After four failed attempts to reach Australia by boat and years spent stranded in Indonesia, Dai returned to Quetta in 2019 to film his community before their stories faded.
The documentary captures the family’s daily life alongside their gradual, painful dispersal across the globe: his parents relocating to Canada, Dai and his niece taking refuge in the United States, and remaining relatives settling in Australia.
“Restrictions on filming kept my camera largely within the home, school and cemetery. I wanted to bear witness to the slow disappearance of my community,” Dai said. “Years from now, someone might find this film and come to know them. I cannot bring my classmates back or restore the years of family separation, but I can pass on something of their lives through cinema. That possibility kept me filming.”
The producing team said in a statement, “It is Khadim’s first feature film, but also the first film of its kind made in Quetta, a city in Pakistan far removed from the world’s gaze. We believe the film offers a rare opportunity to encounter the lives, experiences and perspectives of the Hazara people, who remain largely absent from cinema.”
“Having tracked ‘Hazara Town’ since its pitch at Sunny Side of the Doc in 2023, we knew immediately that this was a story the world needed to see,” said Petar Mitric from Filmotor. “Khadim Dai’s deeply personal lens captures raw, human emotion in a way that is both heartbreaking and essential.”
“Hazara Town” is produced by Ilyas Yourish for Congoo (Belgium), and co-produced by Khadim Dai, Graeme Isaac for Mayfan Films (Australia), and Anke Petersen and Lilian Tietjen for Jyoti Film (Germany).
The film will compete for the IDFA Best Film and IDFA Best First Film Award.
The project was developed with support from the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program (with Open Society Foundations), the IDFA Bertha Fund Classic, Asian Cinema Fund, DMZ Industry (Special Jury Award), Docs Up Fund, Close Up Initiative, InMaat Foundation, Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF), MOIN Filmförderung Hamburg and Documentary Australia, among others.