Culture Desk
Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s unreleased film Shonibar Bikel and Bangladesh’s first anthology film Iti, Tomari Dhaka will take part in the on-going Leeds International Film Festival (LIFF) in the UK.
The festival started at London on June 20 and Birmingham on June 21. It will begin at Manchester on June 26. The film Shonibar Bikel will be respectively screened in London on June 25 and Manchester on June 29.
The film “Shonibar Bikel” based on a 2016 cafe attack that left 22 people dead, saying it would damage the country’s reputation. The censor board denied the theatrical release of “Shonibar Bikel”, a decision the movie’s director criticised as “unhealthy for artistic expression”.
The title of the film translates to “Saturday Afternoon” and dramatises the July 2016 attack on an upmarket cafe by militants who killed 22 of their hostages, including 18 foreigners.
The state’s censor board said the film — a Bangladesh-German co-production — could incite religious fervour in the Muslim-majority nation of 165 million.
Bangladesh has suffered from homegrown extremism for decades, but the Holey Artisan Cafe attack was the worst in years and seen as a major blow to the country’s image as a moderate Muslim nation.
The government has always denied the five young men who seized the cafe for hours before killing many hostages and dying themselves were linked to the Islamic State (IS) group.
Bangladesh Film Censor Board earlier banned the film’s release, both at home and abroad, after watching it twice on the grounds that the film will tarnish the country’s reputation.
According to an AFP report, the title of the film translates to ‘Saturday Afternoon’ and dramatizes the July 2016 attack on an upmarket cafe by extremists, who killed 22 of their hostages, including 18 foreigners.
Shonibar Bikel has been produced by Jaaz Multimedia and Chabial. Anna Katchko of Tandem Productions (Germany) serves as the co-producer.
The film stars Zahid Hasan, Nusrat Imrose Tisha, popular Indian actor Parambrata Chatterjee and others.
Iti, Tomari Dhaka, a collection of 11 short films themed on Dhaka made by 11 directors, features diverse aspects of the megacity Dhaka including its heritage and traditions, people and professions, dreams and nightmares through eleven short films directed by Nuhash Humayun, Tanvir Ahsan, Rahat Rahman, Krishnendu Chattopadhyay, Mahmudul Islam, Golam Kibria Farooki, Mir Mokarram Hossain, Rabiul Alam, Saleh Ahmed, Ahmed Shawki and Tanim Noor.
Fazlur Rahman Babu, Intekhab Dinar, Tisha and others have acted in the films.
