Life In A Metro

The title of Bangladeshi filmmaker Mahde Hasan's debut feature film, Sand City, gives a peek into what it's all about. Just like sand slips through the fingers, it's difficult to hold on to one's desired course in life in the crowded, congested, chaotic, unplanned, polluted megacity of Dhaka.

- Namrata Joshi

The title of Bangladeshi filmmaker Mahde Hasan's debut feature film, Sand City, gives a peek into what it's all about. Just like sand slips through the fingers, it's difficult to hold on to one's desired course in life in the crowded, congested, chaotic, unplanned, polluted megacity of Dhaka. A city where, as a character in the film states, there's no dearth of sand; you can't live with sand, you can't live without sand, there's no escaping sand. Accordingly, life also flows here like the moving sands, erratic and haphazard. Instability is all.

The film dwells on all that's intractable and ephemeral through the parallel stories of two individuals—strangers to each other but bonded unawares by sand that appears to serve a significant purpose for them. But does it truly offer a release and relief, or stifle them? Does it lend a helping hand or suffocate them? Emma (Victoria Chakma) filches sand from a construction site at night for her cats' litter. She is in transit in Dhaka, working and waiting for her visa to relocate abroad, in search of a better life. From the ethnic minority, she is also at the centre of the majoritarian prejudice and cruel slurs.