SYNOPSIS

In 2019, a man named Naveen goes missing while travelling with his girlfriend Cathy through a memorial park in Sydney. Naveen obtains a job at a restaurant two years after arriving in New York and meets Cathy there. Naveen’s lies get more blatant as their relationship progresses. Naveen, or Sameer, is a man who cannot speak the truth about himself, his nationality, religion, family, or his past. Director Farooki widens the stage on a grand scale and borrows the melodrama genre to disclose the truth about a guy named Naveen, a leading filmmaker of Bangladeshi new wave cinema who has been delivering social criticisms against the backdrop of historical and religious tensions in South Asia.

DIRECTOR

Mostofa Sarwar Farooki is a Bangladeshi film director, screenwriter and film producer. Farooki is considered one of the leading figures to bring modernism/realism in Bangladeshi Cinema, those who have bridged the gap between escapism and reality. Farooki has set a new trend in terms of presentation and direction in the early 2000. His debut film was Bachelor (2003) starring Humayun Faridi, Aupee Karim, Ferdous Ahmed, Shabnur and many others. Then his second film, a political satire Made In Bangladesh (2007) starring Zahid Hasan, Tariq Anam Khan, Shahiduzzaman Selim and others. His third film Third Person Singular Number starring Nusrat Imrose Tisha, Topu, Mosharraf Karim was premiered in Busan International Film Festival (2009). It had its European premier in International Film Festival Rotterdam, It was also in the official competition 2009 Middle East International Film Festival. After that he made a short film named Ok Cut. His fourth feature Television (2012) starring Chanchal Chowdhury, Nusrat Imrose Tisha, Mosharraf Karim and Kazi Shahir Huda Rumi was the closing film of Busan International Film Festival and won the APSA Grand Jury Prize in 2013, as well as a further five international awards from Dubai, Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival, Rome’s Asiatica Film Mediale, and Kolkata International Film Festival. His fifth feature film Ant Story starring Sheena Chohan and Noor Imran Mithu was nominated for the Golden Goblet Awards and the Dubai International Film Festival’s Muhr Asia-Africa Awards. In 2014 it was also in competition for APSA and both the Singapore and Kerala International Film Festivals. He finished his sixth feature film Doob: No Bed of Roses starring international star Irrfan Khan, Nusrat Imrose Tisha, Parno Mittra, Rokeya Prachy and others.It was an official project of Film Bazar India 2013. It won Dubai Film Market Award and Kommersant Jury Prize at Moscow International Film Festival 2017. He is all set to release his upcoming ambitious project, a one-shot film, Saturday Afternoon starring Nusrat Imrose Tisha, Parambrata Chatterjee, Zahid Hasan, Eyad Hourani, Mamunur Rashid, a Bangladesh-Germany-Russia co-production inspired by the Dhaka terror attack incident of 1 July 2016 at the Holey Artisan Bakery, Gulshan. The film had its world premiere at the main competition section of 41st Moscow International Film Festival 2019 and won the Russian Federation of Film Critics Jury Prize and Komersant Prize. It is the first of three films of his identity trilogy, the second one being No Land’s Man starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui and the third, Memoria will be based on the Rohingya refugees. Farooki was appointed as an international jury of Asia Pacific Screen Awards 2015, Busan International Film Festival 2017 and Kolkata International Film Festival 2017 and Dhaka International Film Festival 2020. He was also an invited guest and speaker at many other prestigious film festivals. In 2019, he received the Fazlul Haq Memorial Award 2018 and was also honoured by Kaler Kantho newspaper on their anniversary. Farooki’s body of work address such themes as middle class angst, urban youth romance, deception-hypocrisy and frailty of individual, frustration about the confines of one’s culture and conservative Muslim concepts of guilt and redemption.