Migrant (Deshantori)

Directed and Written by: Sujan Mahmud and Mridul Chowdhury
Run time: 70 Mins

Migration is a natural phenomenon, but in Bangladesh, this seems to have turned into a desperate and sometimes reckless effort by tens of thousands of young people from almost all socio-economic backgrounds. Why is taking on risky and sometimes life threatening attempts to migrate becoming an acceptable option for a large segment of the youth? In an effort to investigate the causes of this behavior, a filmmaker takes on a journey that discovers an emotional panorama ranging from the deepest frustrations of the young generation to their infallible national pride. The film serves as a mirror to society featuring interviews of Prof. Md. Zafar Iqbal and Anisul Huq, both popular youth idols in Bangladesh. The backdrop of the film is provided by reconstruction of the heart-wrenching story of 26 young Bangladeshis who set out on an illegal journey to Spain through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea in 2005. Through unexpected twists and turns, the film takes the viewer in a journey filled with emotions of all kinds – frustration, joy, anger, laughter, pain, and national pride.


Muktir Gaan

Directed by: Tareque Masud and Catherine Masud
Run time: 80 mins

Muktir Gaan is a documentary film which explores the impact of cultural identity on the liberation war, where music and song provided a source of inspiration to the freedom fighters and a spiritual bond for the whole emerging nation. A group of Bengali cultural activists travel through refugee camps and battle zones performing rousing songs which capture the essence of the Bengali nation. Directors Catherine and Tareque Masud used original footage by American film-maker Lear Levin, as well as other archival footage collected from the UK and India. Twenty-five years in the making, this film began with the ambition of Lear Levin, an American filmmaker, to make an epic documentary in the tradition of Robert Flaherty on the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. Levin and his crew came across a troupe of traveling musicians, members of a larger cultural movement known as the Bangladesh Mukti Sangrami Shilpi Sangstha, who were traversing the zones of war singing songs of struggle to inspire the guerrilla cadres and the millions of refugees. Levin, who did not know any Bengali, followed this troupe and captured the spirit of the Bengali people through 20 hours of beautifully photographed footage. However, he became so caught up in filming that he returned to the US only just as the war was coming to an end. He was unable to get funds to complete the project and for 20 years, the footage lay in storage in his basement in New York. In 1990, the directors tracked Levin in New York with the intention of making a film based on his footage. It took five years to complete the film, which supplements Levin's footage with archival material on the major events of the war from around the world. Director Tareque Masud's latest film, Matir Moina (The Clay Bird), was featured at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. It's currently banned in Bangladesh, and the center of a major censorship battle.

*Synopsis from "Progressive Bengali Network" website


Shei Rater Kotha Boltey Aseychy ("Tale of the Darkest Night")

Directed by: Kawsar Chowdhury
Run time: 43 min

No other night in the history of Bangladesh could be equaled to that most tragic one--the night of 25 March 1971 when the Pakistan army brought on the sleeping country the most terrible slaughter in the history. In his film, Kawsar Chowdhury upholds before the nation the tales of some unsung heroes, their suppressed anguish. Some of these people acted most valiantly on the night of March 25. Some of them had to sacrifice the most precious treasures of their lives. The tale of Idu Mia, a bookseller, who rescued several wounded victims on the morning of March 26, the tale of the worker of Rokeya Hall who lost his whole family on that night, the tale of the mother who cannot still forget after all these thirty five years the death of her son, the tale of the daughter who has inherited some bullets which were shot at her father on that night--all these tales give a very small glimpse of the brutal genocide carried out by Pakistan military on the night of March 25. Small because Kawsar documents incidents only around the Dhaka University campus. The real measure of that brutality all over the country can be then easily imagined.

Referring to the idea behind naming the film, Kawsar Chowdhury said, "During my visit to Shaheed Minar on March 25, I was interviewing the people who gathered there to pay homage to the martyrs of 1971. Among the crowd, Nazia Jabin, a victim of 1971 along with her child was approaching the Shaheed Minar. During the conversation, she uttered, Shei Rater Kotha Boltey Aseychy (I have come to tell the story of that night). From this conversation, this name of the film has been picked."

* Synopsis based on the review from "The Daily Star" and "Independent."