Matir Moina

This was one of my surprise favourites of the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2002. It painted a rich picture of life in Bangladesh during the revolutionary period of the 1970's with all it's highs and lows. It is filmed in a very documentary style (the director is a seasoned documentary film maker) with all the facts carefully shown to allow the viewer to make up their own mind on things. The visuals are very clean and colourful (again very documentary-esque) with beautiful shots of the fantastic Bangladeshi landscape. The music used in the film seems to be traditional (not that I know much about traditional Bangladeshi music!) and is very touching.

What is truly remarkable about this film is the way all it's points are well balanced, not showing anything to be absolutely right nor wrong. It's portrayal of Islam is fascinating and I learned more about the religion than I'd known before.

Another astonishing point I got from the film was it painted such a good picture of humanity, warts and all. I was watching this pictures of a normal family who's lives are supposed to be so much different than mine, different culture, politics, religion, who live on the other side of the world and yet then seemed so natural and so familiar, not that different at all really.

It's a film I will never forget and I truly recommend that anybody who gets the chance to see it should.