Shyamol Chhaya

The film is set in 1971, during the war of independence in Bangladesh. A group of people board an old motorboat to get away from the war. There are twelve passengers, and the boatmen are trying to take them somewhere safe. All of them have been shaken by what they have seen of the war. As the journey goes on, fear, solidarity and questions of conscience come out among them. The film is not about the front or about heroism; it is about ordinary people inside a war. The land of peace it names stands less as a place than as a hope. The work was the second film Bangladesh submitted for the Oscars. Riaz and Meher Afroz Shaon appear in Humayun Ahmed’s hundred and ten minute Bangladeshi film, completed in 2004.