Best Bangladeshi documentary movies

50 % of the world’s population lives in urban areas. By 2050 this will increase to 80%. Life in a mega city is both enchanting and problematic. Today we face peak oil, climate change, loneliness and severe health issues due to our way of life. But why? The Danish architect and professor Jan Gehl has studied human behavior in cities through 40 years. He has documented how modern cities repel human interaction, and argues that we can build cities in a way, which takes human needs for inclusion and intimacy into account.

'Ironman Arafat', ran 1004 kilometers from Teknaf to Tetulia in 20 days, swam the Bengali Channel 6 times, completed the world's toughest one-day Ironman Triathlon Challenge three times, and became the first Bangladeshi to win the 'Ironman 70.3 World Championship'.

By the coastal belts of Bangladesh, in a small village named ‘Sutarkhali,’ RAKHI lives with her man SOUMEN (32) and their son RAHUL (6). Fighting against all the odds of the woods, along with around 100 families, they cultivated the land for generations until a tidal surge hit the coastal belts of Bangladesh. For RAKHI, SOUMEN, and RAHUL, life is not the same anymore. Seasons change the topography, even relations… Yet after the rain… They go out with spades and shovels to reclaim life again… Are You Listening!

Chittagong in southern Bangladesh is a graveyard for the West’s run-down or obsolete ships, massive vessels driven onto the beaches and left to be taken apart by hand using only the most basic tools. Poor farmers escaping the regular famine in the north of the country travel south to get work. Barefoot and with no masks or safety equipment, they work in the yards under incredibly dangerous conditions—razor-sharp metal hidden in the mud and sand, surrounded by poisonous chemicals.

A documentary film about to resist the brutal action taken by Pakistan occupy army against general people of Bangladesh (previously East Pakistan) in between 26 March, 1971 and 16 Dec, 1971.

Three working-class teenage girls in a port city in Bangladesh escape daily hardships and stifling family lives by riding waves on their surfboards and grabbing hold of the fleeting and thrilling sense of freedom that brings.

Today, like a ship entering the storm, the world faces climate change induced collapse. Once You Know, by director Emmanuel Cappellin, is a poetic and poignant exploration of how four of the world’s leading climate scientists and energy experts find truth, chaos, and hope in their work.

A group of men in North-Eastern Bangladesh are facing a dangerous mission. They are to conquer the river, with a 70 meter long raft. The ride is 300 kilometre long, always downstream. The freight: 25 000 bamboo trees. The men's path begins in the dense forests of the Sylhet region in North-Eastern Bangladesh. Millions of bamboo trunks are hacked down there and being slid down by the workers along the dangerous mountain-stream into the valley. The bamboos reach the river Kushiara through hundreds of these channels. Here, the trunks are bundled - a giant raft arises. Then the long journey begins.

Humaira Bilkis has a problem: after a pilgrimage to Mecca, her mother, who was previously an emancipated poet, has now become devout. The filmmaker has to fight to get her to accept the camera, since her religion forbids images, while hiding her relationship with a Hindu man from Calcutta. Her film plays out like a closed-door documentary, spot-on and moving.

The film covers the assassination of Hasina's father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman along with most of her family member in 1975.

An English couple, a leading London lawyer and his wife re-define later life by motoring rural India in their battered 1936 Rolls Royce, falling into company with tea-wallahs and maharajahs, dodging tribal conflicts and battling with border-officials to get to a photography conference/human rights festival in Bangladesh.

Adhkhana Bhalo Chele Adha Mostaan is a film that explores the duality of an artist told through chats between the Director and Arnob about life, battling our demons and overcoming them. Essentially we're all Adhkhana Bhalo, Adha Mostaan and it's learning to embrace both that sets us free. This film is a self- realisation trip and I hope we can all connect to it through stories of love, loss and human connection.

In Delhi to study film, "I" listens for the breath of its residents on the streets, in the markets, outside the mosques, and at the tourist sites. Dissolving into these her own thoughts and feelings in the process, she makes the city resonate for us.

A documentary film on the Jamuna river.

A short documentary, charting Bangladesh's quest for freedom from Pakistan.

This historic film, completed in 1995 by filmmaking duo Tareque Masud and Catherine Masud tells the true story of a troupe of singers traveling through the refugee camps and zones of war during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. The film blends documentary and fictional genres in a musical structure to tell the story of the birth of a nation and the ideals of secularism and tolerance on which it was founded. The filmmakers combined footage of the cultural troupe and their activities, shot by American filmmaker Lear Levin in 1971, with historic footage collected from archives around the world, to create “Muktir Gaan” (Song of Freedom).

Tradition and contemporary practice of Bauls, Bengali mystic minstrels, are explored in Calcutta filmmaker and author Ruchir Joshi’s essay film.

Beyond The Borders, which portrays the universality of human relationships centering on Japanese-Bangladeshi couples living in Japan.