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After its world premiere and three sold-out screenings at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, Saba, a film by Maksud Hossain, has embarked on a prestigious global festival circuit, screening at the Busan International Film Festival and now in competition at the Red Sea International Film Festival. I recently reconnected with Maksud, my Global Media Makers Fellow, for an in-depth conversation about the creation of his film, reflecting on our shared experience in Los Angeles back in June 2023.

Film Independent’s Global Media Makers (Gmm) is a six-week residency in LA, in partnership with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, supporting independent filmmakers worldwide. This is where I, a Lebanese screenwriter and director, met Maksud Hossain from Bangladesh while we were both in the screenwriting track. It was here that I first read the screenplay for Saba and later watched an early draft of his debut film.

A sense of financial and personal stagnation permeates “Saba,” the Bangladeshi social drama from first-time director Maksud Hossain. A strong (if stylistically straightforward) debut, it follows 25-year-old Saba (Mehazabien Chowdhury), who struggles to make ends meet while looking after her ailing, paraplegic single mother Shirin (Rokeya Prachy), whose own frustrations often explode in Saba’s direction.

To pay for Shirin’s life-saving surgery, Saba finds a waitressing job at a seedy hookah lounge in Dhaka — a position in which, she’s told, women tend not to last — with long hours that only complicate her caregiving duties. It’s one indignity after the next, both for Saba, who has to beg for the job to begin with, and for Shirin, who has no choice but to wait in bed until Saba can bathe her and change her diaper.

Tales of such misfortune run the risk of veering into pity porn, but...

Bangladeshi filmmaker Maksud Hossain is set to unveil his feature directorial debut “Saba” at the Toronto Film Festival. The film tells the story of a young woman who is the sole caregiver for her paraplegic mother in Dhaka.

The project emerged from personal experience. Hossain’s wife Trilora Khan has been the primary caregiver for her paraplegic mother for 25 years following a car accident. After his father-in-law passed away suddenly from Covid-19, Hossain and Khan, who co-wrote the script, began developing a story about a lower-middle class woman in Dhaka facing caregiving challenges without family support or financial resources.

“We started thinking about what if we tell a story of a young woman, Saba, who lives in lower-middle class Dhaka, and she is taking care of her paraplegic mother by herself, without any family, without money. What would Saba do in a situation like this to make sure that her mother lives at any cost?...