Director: Abdullah Mohammed Saad
Released in 2021
Dr Rehana Maryam Noor (Azmeri Haque Badhon) is a medical lecturer at a private college in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She is also a widow, the mother of a young child, and the sole breadwinner in her extended family, which includes aged parents and an unemployed brother.
In the opening scenes of the film, we get the idea that Rehana is the one keeping things together at home. We see her stressful and frustrated attempts to juggle a career and motherhood. The dim, blue lighting, the closeups of Rehana’s face, her limp headscarf and drooping shoulders, the stark and sterile settings of featureless offices, classrooms and the corridors are gloomy and uninviting. There is a sense of heaviness, of claustrophobia and pressure, of walls, both literal and metaphorical, closing in on her. There is also the impression of intense but unacknowledged loneliness. Rehana doesn’t seem to have friends. She has no one to confide in, to talk to. Is this by choice or because of circumstances?
daphne lee 