REHANA MARYAM NOOR directed by Abdullah Mohammad Saad
REHANA MARYAM NOOR directed by Abdullah Mohammad Saad
Country: Bangladesh | Program: Un Certain Regard
Cast: Azmeri Haque Badhon - Rehana
Following 2016’s Live From Dhaka which won top prizes at the Singapore International Film Festival and screened at Rotterdam and Locarno, Bangladeshi director Abdullah Mohammad Saad’s second feature film Rehana combines deliberately unsteady camera work and a series of relentless street and bodily sounds to affront the senses and immerse us in the titular character’s morally ambiguous contemporary Bangladesh.
The first Bangladeshi film to feature in a major competition segment in Cannes’ 74-year history, Rehana is a searing indictment of the fragility of the female condition in a society in which sexism remains rampant. The plot pivots to consider Rehana’s precarious positionalities (played by Azmeri Haque Badhon) as a mother, sister, daughter, professor, and witness to the sexual assault of a student at the hands of a male colleague.
Bathing every scene in a dense blue light that seems to accentuate Rehana’s repressed state, all the old cliches society uses to look the other way in cases of sexual assault rear their ugly heads: she is intimidated, threatened, bribed, dismissed and finally pressured to resign as her increasingly fractious pursuit of the truth brings the film’s drama to fever pitch.
Tightly framed close-ups and prolonged sequences interpolate the viewer to consider questions of justice and motive from the perspective of the female lead’s fierce moral compass, guided by her unapologetically feminist convictions which border on the obsessive as she tries to convince Annie, the assault victim, to come forward.
Rehana is told: ‘Women should not have big egos.’ We witness the gradual unravelling of her mental state, and her somewhat distant relationship with her daughter becomes worse as she draws more and more into herself. The film’s final scene—a terse altercation with Rehana and her first-grade daughter who has inherited her stubborn streak—leaves Rehana’s fate open-ended, and the audience breathless with unanswered questions. An intimate portrait of the price one woman is prepared to pay for what is right, director Saad contributes to the ongoing conversation surrounding equality and sexual abuse with a film sure to spark controversy.
Worldwide rights for Rehana are represented by Berlin-based sales agent Films Boutique. A UK release date is yet to be announced.
