6th London Bengali film festival begins today

Europe’s largest Bengali film festival, the London Bengali Film Festival, has announced the full line-up for this year’s event. The festival will begin today.

The festival will feature seven feature films and three short films in Bengali and Hindi languages from Bangladesh, India and beyond.

The festival will open with the UK premiere of Muhammad Quayum’s debut feature, ‘ Kura Pokkhir Shunne Ura’ (The Golden Wings of Watercocks). The film follows the lives and struggles of peasants living in the marshland regions of Bangladesh. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with the director.

Other UK premieres include ‘A Holy Conspiracy’, directed by Saibal Mitra, starring India’s two most renowned actors, Naseeruddin Shah and Soumitra Chatterjee, which depicts a powerful courtroom battle between science and religion. ‘The Terrace’, a coming-of-age story starring Paoli Dam, and ‘Into the Mist’, an ethnographic docu-style Indian feature directed by Amitabh Chaterji, will also be screened.

In addition, the festival will feature two more UK premieres: Barnali Ray Shukla’s Hindi romantic drama ‘Joon’ and Raja Ghosh’s magic-realist drama ‘The Keysmith’.

The short film programme includes a quirky adventure comedy for children from Bangladesh called ‘Kathal’, a human narra-tive on mental health titled ‘After the Threshold’ by US-based filmmaker Tanni Chaudhuri, and another short from Bangla-desh, ‘The Unfinished Poem’. The festival’s closing night will feature ‘An Angel’s Kiss’, a moving drama directed by award-winning Indian director Kaushik Ganguly, which follows the story of Lokkhi, a newborn girl with four arms.

The festival will run till end of this month.