‘The Difficult Bride’ continues global journey

“The Difficult Bride”, the first Bangladeshi film selected for the Orizzonti Competition of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, is continuing its international festival journey. Following its world premiere in Venice, the film has been invited to eight major festivals across Europe, North America and Asia within a month. 

After Venice, the film screened in the Centrepiece section of the 50th Toronto International Film Festival. The Rubaiyat Hossain-directd project will next be featured in the Panorama section of the Vancouver International Film Festival, taking place in Canada from 1 to 11 October. The film will also participate in the 58th Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival in Spain from 9 to 18 October, before heading to the 70th BFI London Film Festival, where it will compete in the Best Film section. 

Following its screening at the La Roche-sur-Yon International Film Festival in France, The Difficult Bride will travel to the 62nd Chicago International Film Festival in the United States. It will also participate in Japan’s 38th Tokyo International Film Festival and Austria’s 63rd Vienna International Film Festival. 

“The Difficult Bride” is Rubaiyat Hossain’s fourth feature film. The movie centres on a lower-middle-class mother of two who regularly visits an ordinary beauty parlour in Dhaka, where she faces subtle pressure to become “fairer” and more conventionally bridal-looking. Her body gradually becomes a commodity under social expectations.

The film is a Bangladesh-France-Portugal-Norway-Germany co-production and features Zaineen Chowdhury Karim, Rikita Nandini Shimu, Sunerah Binte Kamal, Azmeri Haque Badhan, Damer Khan, Shatabdi Wadud, Saberi Alam and Mohammad Bari.