Canadian Premiere
The Rocket—actually a rather placid paddle steamer—has been ferrying rich and poor through the wide, slow, shallow rivers of Bangladesh for the best part of a century. Kamar Ahmad Simon’s kinetic and artfully chaotic film is a travelogue with staged elements. In this hybrid fiction blended with reality, actors impersonate student journalists who record an interview with a couple of government politicians (also actors); a YouTuber vlogs his journey with manufactured rapture (cinephiles may think of Geraldine Chaplin’s BBC reporter in Altman’s Nashville); and a deck passenger angrily confronts the steward blocking his access to toilets reserved for the cabin class. If Kamar has laced this two-day odyssey with sociopolitical commentary, you could be forgiven for taking everything at face value: the movie has the electrical charge of observational documentary, the camera drifts across faces, personalities, landscapes, jokes, squabbles, songs, and then moves on. It’s a snapshot of an entire country, so vivid you can smell it.
Delightful… Simon documents the journey with both geographical and sociopolitical fascination, drinking in the scenery while wryly observing the tangle of classes, castes and character types on deck. The loose, entertaining result is equal parts leisurely travelogue, observational social study and droll real-life comedy of errors.”—Guy Lodge, Variety
Harrell Award for the best film in Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) 2022
Media Partner
Kazi Md. Mohsin, Abdullah Al-Mamun, Ariful Islam, Tuhin Kanti Das, Surjo Polas, Noor-I-Naznin, Oniruddho Ratan
Bangladesh/France/Norway
2021
In Bengali with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
A Bug's Life
There's a world going on underground! Pixar's second feature shrinks Seven Samurai to ant-like proportions, with heroic Flick enlisting the services of a touring flea circus to defend the colony against the marauding grasshoppers. Rated: G
Image: © Disney Pixar 1998
7 Beats per Minute
While attempting a world record freedive in 2018, Jessea Lu lost consciousness and stopped breathing for four minutes. Years later, Jessea returns to the site of her near-death experience, ready to dive again and become reborn.
The Wild Bunch (Director's Cut)
The Mexico/Texas borderlands, 1913: Pike (William Holden) leads his gang of aging outlaws on a foray south for one last hurrah. Peckinpah's masterpiece, a savage lament for men who believe in nothing but find respect by dying in vain.
Armand
When six-year-old Armand is accused of abusing another boy, his mother is called in for a school meeting. Bracing and bold, this is a lacerating drama from writer-director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel (the grandson of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann).
Credits
Producer
Sara Afreen
Screenwriter
Kamar Ahmad Simon
Cinematography
Kamar Ahmad Simon
Editor
Saikat Sekhareswar Ray
Original Music
Saikat Sekhareswar Ray
Director
Photo by Saiful Islam Soikat
Kamar Ahmad Simon
Kamar Ahmad Simon’s debut Are You Listening! (2012) won the Grand Prix in Cinéma du Réel in Paris and the Golden Conch at the Mumbai International Film Festival. His script for Day After… was awarded at Locarno Film Festival’s Open Doors Hub and won the Arte International Open Doors Prize in 2016. The Museum of the Moving Image in New York and the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland have screened his work. Kamar has been a jury member in the Sydney Film Festival.
Filmography: Are You Listening! (2012); Neel Mukut (2021)