Filmmaker Sai Paranjape is planning an English film with Bollywood's current safe bet Saif Ali Khan seven years after she made her last film "Saaz".

The director who usually pens her own plots says the new film - to be shot in a crumbling mansion in Goa - has been inspired by a play in Marathi, her native tongue.

"Xapai", which in Portuguese means grandfather, is the story of an old patriarch who lives alone in the mansion, deserted by his large family and looked after by his chauffeur and retainer Maria.

On his 90th birthday, Xapai, the patriarch, has his family - complete with nearly 10 children, their wives and grandchildren - descend on him and thereby unfolds a story of inter-relationships with family intrigues and an unexpected twist.

"It is black comedy," says Paranjape, who was in Kathmandu to inaugurate a documentary film festival.

"I have changed the story of an old-fashioned Marathi family to the Roman Catholic milieu."

Though she is yet to work out the entire cast, she feels Indian theatre director Habib Tanveer will be just right to play Xapai and Saif for the other key male character, the 90-year-old's black sheep son who is thrown out of the family home and comes back a millionaire.

"No one in the family knows, but he has made his millions as a Mumbai don."

Paranjape's last film "Saaz" (1998) starring Shabana Azmi and Aruna Irani was about two singer sisters - a film some people said resembled the lives of Bollywood's leading divas Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhonsle.

"I am still a struggler," she said wryly. "Even at this age, distributors and financiers do not flock to my door."

One of her films, "Disha", is yet to be released commercially due to the absence of a distributor.

However, the multiple award-winner said she had never felt at a disadvantage in Bollywood because she was a woman.

"People were always wonderfully co-operative," she said. "Their attitudes were of sporting encouragement and admiration."