“Shunte Ki Pao!” declared Best Film at Cinema du Reel
Kamar Ahmed Simon's feature-length documentary “Shunte Ki Pao!” (Are You Listening!), has been honoured at the prestigious Paris Cinema du Reel, one of Europe's biggest documentary festivals. On Saturday night at the closing of the festival, at George Pompidou centre, the jury said: “With patience and intelligence in a hostile environment, Kamar knew how to stay at the good distance of the people he filmed to build a humanist movie, in the tradition of the feature length documentary narratives. 'Are You Listening!' is a visual symphony and an ode to life.”
The film was earlier selected for the main international competition, along with 10 other films from across the world.
The film, based on the lives of residents of a small village in coastal Bangladesh, had been screened at the biggest documentary festival in the world, IDFA, and was the opening film at Dok Leipzig, the oldest documentary festival.
The film had also won three European grants, and was the first Bangladeshi film to be ever invited to the prestigious Berlinale, being one of the nine films chosen for the editing lab of the Berlinale Talent Campus programme.`