‘The Difficult Bride’ heads to eight more festivals after historic Venice selection

After making history at the Venice International Film Festival, Bangladeshi film “The Difficult Bride” has been invited to eight major film festivals across Europe, North America, and Asia within a month of its world premiere.

Directed by Rubaiyat Hossain, the film became the first Bangladeshi feature to be selected for the Orizzonti competition section of the Venice International Film Festival.

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Following Venice, “The Difficult Bride” participated in the Centrepiece section of the Toronto International Film Festival. It will next be screened in the Panorama section of the Vancouver International Film Festival in Canada, scheduled for October 1–11.

The film will then participate in the 58th Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival in Spain, taking place from October 9–18, before heading to the BFI London Film Festival, where it will compete in the Best Film category.

“The Difficult Bride” is also set to participate in the La Roche-sur-Yon International Film Festival in France and the Chicago International Film Festival in the United States. It will subsequently travel to the Tokyo International Film Festival in Japan and the Vienna International Film Festival in Austria.

“The Difficult Bride” is Hossain’s fourth feature film. She previously directed “Meherjaan” (2011), “Under Construction” (2015), and “Made in Bangladesh” (2019). She received the National Film Award for Best Director for “Made in Bangladesh”.

The film centres on a lower-middle-class mother of two who regularly visits an ordinary beauty parlour in Dhaka. There, she encounters an unspoken pressure to become fairer, slimmer, and conform more closely to conventional expectations of how a bride should look. Gradually, her body begins to be treated almost like a commodity.

The cast includes Zaineen Chowdhury Karim, Reekita Nondine Shimu, Sunerah Binte Kamal, Azmeri Haque Badhan, Damer Khan, Shatabdi Wadud, Saberi Alam, and Mohammad Bari.

“The Difficult Bride” is an international co-production between Bangladesh’s Khona Talkies and production partners from France, Portugal, Norway, and Germany.