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Feature debutant Rezwan Shahriar Sumit’s “The Salt in Our Waters,” bows Nov. 29 at the Singapore International Film Festival’s Asian Visions strand after successful festival screenings at London, Busan and Torino.

The project was supported by the Spike Lee Fellowship, which offered the film’s preliminary writing grants, France’s Cnc aide aux cinemas du monde, the Torino Film Lab’s audience design fund, and Bangladesh’s national film grant.

The film follows a city-raised sculptor who visits a remote fishing island on the Bangladeshi Delta, and finds himself centerstage in a primal, elemental conflict between land and sea, man and nature, past and future.

Shot on location on Bangladesh’s Patuakhali shore, 11 hours by road from the capital, Dhaka, the film stems from Sumit’s memories of visiting the region in 2008 during the devastating Cyclone Sidr.

“Those memories stayed with me for a long time,” Sumit told Variety.

Film Republic, a London-based specialist sales agent, has acquired the international rights to feature debutant Rezwan Shahriar Sumit’s “The Salt in Our Waters.”

The film had its world premiere at the British Film Institute London Film Festival earlier this month, followed by its Asian premiere at the Busan Film Festival.

“The Salt in Our Waters” tells the story of an artist who leaves the bustling Bangladesh capital Dhaka to relocate to a coastal village on the Bangladeshi delta for inspiration. Welcomed by the local fishermen, the artist’s modern ideas and sculptures enchant the local chairman and the children, but not all welcome his modern approach with such open arms. Against the backdrops of environment change and the rising tide, some villagers accuse him and his works of having provoked disastrous weather patterns.

The cast includes Fazlur Rahman Babu, Shatabdi Wadud, Titas Zia, Tasnova Tamanna and Ashok Bepari. The...

The conflicting interaction between a city artist and the villagers of a fishing isle is at the core of young Bangladeshi director and writer Rezwan Shahriar Sumit’s first feature “The Salt in Our Waters”. Even before its world premiere, scheduled at the BFI London Film Festival, the film has been already awarded France’s Cnc Aide aux cinémas du monde, Tfl Audience Design Fund, Bangladesh’s national film grant, and the Spike Lee Fellowship. The bar is high!

“The Salt in Our Waters” is screening at the BFI London Film Festival

City-man and sculptor Rudro (Titas Zia), decides to leave behind the chaos of Dhaka and spend some time on a small mangrove fishing island in the Bay of Bengal, to work but also to retrace the steps of his late father, a coastguard who once had fallen in love with that part of the country. Once on the island,...