With Bebaak, director Shazia Iqbal wanted to depict what she calls a 1,000-year-old “jugalbandi” between patriarchy and religion, and how it affects women. She found the perfect ally in filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, who came on board as producer. It was an intuitive call, says Kashyap—as soon as he read the script, he wanted to support Iqbal in taking the short film to a wider audience. “I knew Bebaak is a script coming from a personal space; [it stems from] Shazia’s own growing-up experiences. I wasn’t involved in the creative part at all, but just in empowering Shazia to make her film,” says the filmmaker.