Bangladeshi film on Sri Lanka TV for the first time
Bijon Imtiaz's debut venture Matir Projar Deshe (Kingdom of Clay Subjects) clinches another achievement for Bangladesh cinema. It is set to be screened on Sri Lanka's National Television at 10:00pm on 15 December. It is the first foreign language movie to be broadcast on a Sri Lankan TV channel.
Producer of the movie Arifur Rahman confirmed this. The film will be dubbed in Sinhalese for the Sri Lankan production.
"We proudly announce that Matir Projar Deshe is to be premiered as the first foreign language film on Sri Lankan National Television," production house Goopi Bagha Productions Ltd said on its official Facebook page on Sunday.
"More than three million viewers will watch the Bengali film," it said and added, "This is a gift of the Sri Lankan government to the independence of Bangladesh and Bengali language."
Earlier, the film had been screened at a film festival in Sri Lanka arranged by the Bangladesh high commissioner there. Several state officials identified the socioeconomic condition experienced in the film relevant to that of Sri Lanka, according to the producer.
The film was chosen as a token of the friendly cultural bond with Bangladesh. The Sri Lankan officials contacted the Bangladesh high commissioner, Riaz Hamidullah, and the producer Arifur Rahman for the screening.
The self-funded 88-minute film took almost five years to finish.
The film was originally released on 23 March 2018. It has represented Bangladesh in over 20 international film festivals so far and had won the best film award in Chicago South Asian Film Festival 2016.
The story revolves around the characters of Jamal and Fatima. At the outset they remind one of the siblings Apu-Durga from Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, and Anu-Asma from Tareque Masud’s Matir Moina (The Clay Bird).
Mahmudur Anindo and Chinmoyee Gupta portrayed the characters of Jamal and Fatima. The cast include Rokeya Prachy, Jayanto Chattopadhyay, Sheuly Akhter, Kochi Khandakar, Abdullah Rana, Monir Ahmed and Ramiz Razu.
Mahmudur also won the National Film Award as best child artiste for the film.