“Ekjon Kobi'r Mrittyu” to premiere at Kolkata Int'l Film Festival
Eminent Bangladeshi filmmaker Abu Sayeed's latest work “Ekjon Kobi'r Mrittyu”, reportedly the first feature film in Bangladesh to be made through crowd-funding, has got the Censor Board's clearance without any cuts and will have its world premiere in the Kolkata International Film Festival this month.
The film was submitted to the censor board on October 9 and the decision to clear the film without a cut was taken on October 15, Sayeed said in a statement.
He said that his experimental film has been chosen for the “Innovation In Moving Image” section of the main competition category Kolkata International Film Festival, to be held from November 10 to 17.
A five-member international jury will select three films for the Golden Royal Bengal Tiger awards for best film, best director and a special jury award. The awards entail cash prizes of Rs 70 lakh and Rs 30 lakh for the best film and best director respectively.
Sayeed said he, along with veteran actor Jayanta Chattopadhyay who plays the lead role and actress Irin Sultana, will attend the event in Kolkata.
The film is about a nature-loving poet who is unable to gaze at the stars in the sky over Dhaka due to a haze caused by air pollution.
In an interview with The Daily Star in July this year, Sayeed described his film as “slightly surrealistic and experimental” and said the concern over environmental pollution was one of the reasons he made the movie though the bigger motivation was to explore a person's intimate links with the universe and how he or she communicates with the universe.
Among other films in the competition category are “A Sort of a Family” (Argentina-Brazil-France-Poland production), “Good Manners” (Brazil-France), “Los Perros” (France-Chile), Hungarian film “1945”, Indian entries “The Holy Fish” and “Nocturnal Times”, Iranian entry “Kupal” and Polish film “Birds are singing in Kigali”.