‘Jalaler Golpo’ wins awards in SAARC film festival

Abu Shahed Emon's highly acclaimed feature film "Jalaler Golpo" (Jalal's Story) continues to win international award, including two more at the SAARC International Film Festival held in Sri Lanka. Barkat Hossain Palash won the Best Cinematographer award while the Chirkut band received the award for best original score on Monday. The festival is being held from June 1-6 in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

"Jalaler Golpo" won a handful of awards at a number of international film festivals last year including the the prize for best work by a debutant director at Kerala International Film Festival in India last December. Last year, the film also received the award for best debutant director's film at the Jaipur International Film Festival in February 2015 and the best feature film in Avanca International Film Festival in Portugal in July the same year.

Be it one boy or three, the story of Jalal is the same for too many like the one in Abu Shahed Emon's debut, Jalal's Story, a rambling three part chronicle of life as a voiceless orphan in rural, mercenary Bangladesh. Though ceaselessly downbeat, writer-director Emon tackles issues ranging from women's rights or lack thereof to the enduring hold superstitions have on some parts of modern Bangladesh.

Told in three parts, Jalal's Story chronicles the life a child by that name, as fate literally carries him down the river from one unwelcoming home to the next. Part 1 begins with Jalal the 20 year-old-budding gangster (Arafat Rahman), adopted by Sajib (Mosharraf Karim) as an orphan boy. He's learning how to strong-arm Sajib's rivals and anyone who gets in the way of his political aspirations. Sajib kidnaps a young woman, Shila (Moushumi Hamid), and keeps her as a sexual hostage and when she inevitably gets pregnant, her value to him drops and he orders the baby disappeared. The infant is set adrift on the river, with Jalal trying his best to rescue him despite his inability to swim.

Part 2 picks up when Miraj (Nur A Alam Nayon) and Marium take the baby into their home when he comes ashore near their house. A series of fortunate coincidences has the villagers convinced he's blessed by Allah - an idea Miraj exploits for profit. But a jealous neighbor stirs up trouble and the baby, named Jalal, is abandoned to the river again. The final chapter takes place in another aspiring politician and landlord's home, Karim (Tauquir Ahmed), who rescues the baby, kept the name but has little to do with him as an eight-year-old (Mohammod Emon). His latest wife, Rahima (Shormi Mala), takes a shine to Jalal, but when a skeevy shaman is summoned to solve the couple's infertility problems, Jalal is branded a demon and set on the river once again.