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Maisha Islam Monamee

The author graduated from Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka and is a contributor at The Daily Star. Find her @monameereads on Instagram.

Why Spider-Man feels like Gen Z's superhero

Why Spider-Man feels like Gen Z's superhero

5 August 2026
"Brand New Day" succeeds for a different reason. Beneath the web-slinging and skyline chases lies a story that feels surprisingly familiar to the generation filling the theatres.
5 August 2026
how AI affects critical thinking

I spent two years learning AI, then another year unlearning it

27 July 2026
Like many people working close to technology, I believed AI would become the defining aspect for our generation.
27 July 2026
‘Beyond the Brief’ explores the intersection of art and design

‘Beyond the Brief’ explores the intersection of art and design

26 July 2026
Every colour, typeface and composition is ultimately expected to solve a problem. “Beyond the Brief”, currently underway at Bengal Shilpalay in Dhanmondi, asks a deceptively simple question: what happens when those problems disappear?
26 July 2026
Christopher Nolan revisits glory, guilt and the ghosts of war in ‘The Odyssey’

Christopher Nolan revisits glory, guilt and the ghosts of war in ‘The Odyssey’

22 July 2026
It is an adaptation of one of humanity’s oldest stories, an epic that has shaped the language of adventure, heroism and homecoming for nearly three millennia.
22 July 2026
July uprising memories in Bangladesh

July then and now: Remembering the month that changed us

17 July 2026
Sometimes I find myself wondering what it must feel like to have July arrive without something tightening in one’s chest.
17 July 2026
15 years later, ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’ still finds new meaning

15 years later, ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’ still finds new meaning

15 July 2026
The scenery still takes my breath away, the playlist still makes me want to pack a bag, and Farhan Akhtar’s poetry still lands exactly where it should. Yet every rewatch feels like a different film.
15 July 2026
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‘Urban Images’ turns art into an act of solidarity

11 July 2026
Art has always found ways to document cities through the rhythms, fractures and quiet resilience that define urban life. Veteran artist Kazi Salahuddin Ahmed’s latest solo exhibition, “Urban Images”, does exactly that. Yet beyond the abstract compositions and layered cityscapes lies another, more immediate story—one of artists standing beside one another when it matters most.
11 July 2026
Why we keep falling for fictional boyfriends

Why we keep falling for fictional boyfriends

7 July 2026
Then someone inevitably resurrects Mr Darcy, Jim Halpert or Aditya Kashyap to remind everyone that the blueprint existed long before TikTok edits.
7 July 2026
From Ukhiya to Gaza: Children’s art of solidarity in Dhaka

From Ukhiya to Gaza: Children’s art of solidarity in Dhaka

Displayed across the gallery walls, the works present personal yet collective messages addressed to the children of Palestine, shaped by empathy, resilience, and lived understanding. Through uncomplicated visuals, handwritten words, and candid imagery, the children articulate solidarity that travels across borders, geographies, and circumstances.
12 January 2026
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Do we still care about cinematic universes?

For over a decade, cinematic universes trained audiences to think in timelines, phases, and post-credit scenes. Films evolved into chapters, chapters evolved into phases, and phases evolved into cultural calendars. Watching a movie stopped being about a single story and started feeling like homework with a very expensive visual budget. In 2026, that structure looks different—driven by audience behaviour, financial realities, creative priorities, and measurable performance data across film and streaming.
5 January 2026
EoY conversations

Gen-Z guide to end-of-year conversations

End-of-year (EoY) conversations often feel like performance reviews, but they are so much more than that. If done right, they are a chance to showcase wins, reflect on growth, map out your next moves, and strengthen relationships with your manager.
4 January 2026
Tech trends shaping 2026: multiagent AI, hybrid networks and pre-emptive security

7 major tech trends to watch out for in 2026

As the global technology sector moves deeper into the second half of the decade, 2026 is shaping up as a year of structural transition. The emphasis is shifting from experimentation to systems that can scale, integrate smoothly and operate reliably in everyday life.
31 December 2025
Wrapped

A year wrapped in data, metrics, and gamified moments

We now live inside a series of dashboards. If Spotify is the most visible example, it is hardly alone. Everything from our sleep to our steps to our language-learning streaks comes with a neatly packaged scorecard at the end of the year.
29 December 2025
Christmas as we have seen it

Christmas as we have seen it

In Bangladesh, however, Christmas occupies a different cultural register. It arrives through Netflix thumbnails, holiday episodes that resurface every December, mall décor inspired by Hollywood aesthetics, and Instagram captions borrowing emotions from films we have watched far more times than we admit.
25 December 2025
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‘Pawmum Parban’ brings Mro children’s stories to Dhaka

There are exhibitions you walk into, and there are exhibitions that feel like you are stepping across a threshold into someone else’s world. “Pawmum Parban”, currently underway at Alliance Française de Dhaka, unfolds like the latter; carrying a depth that quietly rearranges how you look at a culture you thought you vaguely knew. I went in expecting an art show and left with the sense that a small group of children from the hills had succeeded in doing something the city often fails at: making us feel something beyond our own noise.
22 December 2025
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Hadi’s death will haunt us forever

In July 2024, we, the Gen-Z, stepped into the streets, frightened yet resolute, wounded yet unwilling to break, because we believed Bangladesh could be rewired around dignity.
21 December 2025
Gen Z career guide

The Gen Z guide to thriving in your first job

Your first job feels a bit like walking into adulthood with Google Maps turned on, praying the little blue dot knows where it is going. You are excited, anxious, overprepared in weird ways, and underprepared in the ways that matter.
18 December 2025
How rewatching became our default way to watch

How rewatching became our default way to watch

Rewatching has quietly become one of the most dominant forms of entertainment consumption, even though it rarely gets framed that way. It is often dismissed as laziness, nostalgia, or lack of curiosity.
16 December 2025
The strange science behind Spotify Wrapped and its unexpected results

The strange science behind Spotify Wrapped and its unexpected results

Real life is messy; algorithms tidy it up. Maybe that’s why we love Wrapped so much. Maybe that’s why we forgive it when it gets things wrong. And maybe that’s why we laugh every year when the Pritam meme resurfaces, because the truth is, no matter what we listen to, Wrapped tells us a story we are secretly eager to believe.
14 December 2025
More than just an obsession, fandom as a way of connection

More than just an obsession, fandom as a way of connection

In 2025, fandom is a central part of storytelling, and studios and creators design worlds that fans can live in, expand, debate, and emotionally inhabit. Stories are co-owned and these fandoms are where ownership is vocalised.
11 December 2025
Wickedly bound by female friendship

Wickedly bound by female friendship

"Wicked" has spent two decades dismantling that framework. What began on Broadway as a renegade act of revisionism has now expanded on screen into Jon M Chu’s two-part cinematic saga, which is unhurried, emotionally layered, and audaciously uninterested in letting romance or heroism overshadow the real heart of Oz: the evolving, often painful bond between Elphaba and Glinda. Chu’s adaptation understands that audiences come pre-loaded with assumptions.
9 December 2025
‘Tamasha’ and the long road back to ourselves

‘Tamasha’ and the long road back to ourselves

The first time you watch it, it feels like a love story with a quirky adventure at the start. But the more your own life begins to scatter into contradictions and compromises, the more Imtiaz Ali’s world starts sounding familiar.
27 November 2025
The heart and horror of Frankenstein

The heart and horror of Frankenstein

Guillermo del Toro has spent most of his artistic life circling that question, and his new cinematic adaptation finally dives into it with both hands. It arrives like a long awaited confession. The result is a film that is lush, wounded, often brutal, and strangely hopeful, a vision that honours Shelley’s philosophical bones while draping them in del Toro’s unmistakable flesh.
25 November 2025
Sheikh Hasina verdict

A historic verdict that carries weight even in absentia

The decision to hold Hasina accountable is not merely judicial but also personal.
18 November 2025
Financial guide

The Gen Z guide to financial sanity in your 20s

Financial sanity in our twenties is not about becoming a finance bro overnight or rejecting every impulse purchase that brings us joy. It is about building a system that can survive our bad weeks, unexpected expenses, and the constant oscillation between “I am going to be rich” and “why is everything so expensive?”
18 November 2025
What freedom looks like in Mira Nair’s films

What freedom looks like in Mira Nair’s films

In an industry often content to either idolise or invisibilise women, Nair managed to carve a cinematic language that neither glorifies nor redeems them. She allows them to take up space, to be complicated, to have appetites.
9 November 2025
ai_representation_illustration

The trouble with companies using AI for the sake of it

It has become almost fashionable for companies to claim they are using AI. Every boardroom, every quarterly report, every strategic offsite seems to revolve around the same language of transformation.
6 November 2025
The world still falls in love with Shah Rukh Khan

The world still falls in love with Shah Rukh Khan

SRK is not just the last of the superstars because of what he has achieved, but because of how he has done it. In an era where stardom was built on distance, he created intimacy.
2 November 2025

Pagination

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