Television

This move was very fantastic beside it was educational.

After launching a quite promising festival run, Mostofa Farooki's Television finally got released at home. Like other Farooki film, this film also got a grand reception from the youth. And why not? The film is so refreshing in style, content, and treatment. Farooki handled a very delicate subject with a great cinematic sensitivity which took audience to a roller-coaster journey of humor and emotion. Generally, films with this much of depth in the content tends to end up looking very airy, too idealistic, and drab. But Television delivers a quite entertaining journey thanks to a very solid story-telling, well thought-out shot-divisions, and brilliant performance by actors. Shahir Kazi Huda, Mosharof Karim, Chanchal Chowdhury, and Nusrat Imrose Tisha's name should be mentioned specially. Like many other audiences, I am totally blown away by the film! One strange allegation caught my eyes that needs to be replied! I don't know who invented this but a kind of connection between Television and a Turkish film Vizontele has been invented by a small group of Bangladeshi over-enthusiastic people! This allegation made me and my film-buff friends so sad. Then we collected and watched Vizontele and found no similarity in the storyline, concept, style, or treatment! Two films have two different plots, two different intentions, and two different philosophy. If just 'in both the films, a TV set is brought to a remote village and that stirs lot of incident and both are humorous and both have a stunning ending'- this makes two films similar then I am very sorry to say- you will not find a single original film in the world. This is such a poor and unfounded allegation. I would wrap this review with a single line- this is the most refreshing cinema from Bangladesh.

Even before we have met the main characters of the story: Amin, his son Solaiman (Chanchal Chowdhury), his girlfriend Kohinoor (Nusrat Imrose Tisha), and Mojnu (Mosharraf Karim), who works under Solaiman as a help and is also in love with Kohinoor, director Mostofa Sarwar Farooki has established the main theme of his film, which won the Jury Grand Prize at the Asia Pacific Screen Award, closed the Busan International Film Festival and was Bangladesh's Oscar entry in 2013. It is now streaming on Bengali digital platform Hoichoi with subtitles.

This movie shows a strange village where no one can watch television and young people cannot use mobile phones.

I like the writing of the movie. Mostafa Sarwar Farooqi always makes such good movies. The cinematography and the screenplay was good.

Mojnu was interesting as a character and the actor made it even better. The story of Solaiman and Kohinoor's relationship was amazing. You will love it,

The acting of Chanchal Chowdhury and Mosharraf Karim was fantastic. Nusrat Imroz Tisha was a good actress in the movie.

I would suggest you to watch this movie.

In a rural village in present day Bangladesh (though sometimes the village seems to have frozen in time, at times only the presence of cell phones tell us we are in the present), a strict religious elder, called the Uncle by the scared locals, has banned the presence of television, among other things, as he believes the Koran bans the creation of images. This is not well taken by the local community, who seems less bothered by the coming of modernity than he is. A subplot has the tentative, clandestine and obviously chaste romance between a pretty vivacious girl called Kohinoor, that seems to represent a more modern face of the country and the cowed son of the Uncle.

Since I have never been to Bangladesh, I don't know how realistic this film is. The movie is interesting and never boring, though it sometimes goes over the top. A more subtle approach would have served it better. For instance, the village leader is almost always portrayed as an ignorant thug, a petty tyrant over his fellow villagers. A sign of his ignorance is that his desire to go to the Hajj crashes down when he realizes that he needs a passport, yet taking a photo for it is a big no no according to his beliefs. Only in the final scene, we are able to empathize a little with him.

As an American I'm getting completely bored with US TV & Film. I find Asian cinema to be really refreshing and interesting. I'm late to the party with this film Television and am so glad to have seen it. Beautifully shot in Bangladesh (the country just pops with color), authentic characters, wonderful script, with an absolute killer plot twist in the end. Can't say enough about this film. SEE IT!