Nirobe

This documentary shows the struggle of a woman named Hasina who has spent her entire life supporting her family when her father suddenly passes away. Hasina comes from a lower middle class family from the remote district of Satkhira. Unable to graduate after her father's death, Hasina joins a local NGO as a grassroots level worker. Working there for 10 years, suddenly the donations for the NGO dry up. Hasina then begins looking for another job. 

She finds one in another NGO, working for the disabled community of Bangladesh. With her previous experience, she flourishes, travelling around the country to help the disabled in need, while championing their cause. In between the years pass by and she never gets the chance to get married. Until one day she meets a lawyer. Their love story begins and they decided to get married.

Having Finally found some semblance of stability, suddenly her bad luck strikes again. An accident leads to an abortion and Hasina goes back to her depression from there. This affects her work and finally she has to be discharged after refusing a lower position.  Back home her husband walks away from her belieiving that financial scandals were behind her dismissal. After years of hard labour and selflessness, Hasina finds herself alone in a hospital when she is about to have an operation. She was diagnosed with a tumour from which she never recovered.

The theme of this documentary shows the life of a hard working middle class woman who spends her life for someone one else and in her days of sorrow no one is beside her. It touches the heart as the story has been well narrated by the director Ms. Jannatul Ferdous Ivy, the first disabled woman film director of Bangladesh. 

Ms Ivy graduated from National University with a BA in English Literature and has been working in an NGO related to Human Rights, specifically for the women and disabled people. When I asked her what made her decide to make such a movie she replied it was a passion for her. During our discussion Ms. Ivy mentioned that even though she was offered financial support for her first movie by South Asian Women Fund, she declined. She mentioned that when she started working for film the  no one was willing to help her and no one was supporting her. In fact, she had to face a lot of hostility from various  places as they thought that she was a threat to them.  The media did not show any kind of encouragement for her as they thought that her movie was an NGO funded one. So she had to bear the entire cost of the movie. Fortunately enough, her film was show cased in various film festivals around the world and it was appreciated. 

Nirobe was shown in Bangladesh during the film festival in January. Ms Ivy mentioned that even though not enough crowds were present to watch the movie as it was a documentary, those who watched it appreciated her work and effort.

During the fag end of our conversation I asked her what was her future plan and what she intends to do. She mentioned that she was working on a film related to gender issue and she also would like to see her NGO flourish for the disabled community of Bangladesh.

By Shahed Latif