The film “Rabeya” (The Sister), based on the Liberation War, will be screened at the Liberation War Film Festival at the International Digital Cultural Archive, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy at 6pm today.
Directed by Tanvir Mokammel, the plot of the story revolves around the War of Liberation in 1971. In a remote village on the banks of the River Rupsha live two young sisters, Rabeya and Rokeya.
Both their parents are dead , so they live with the religiously conservative household of their uncle (their aunt’s husband). Their uncle Emdad Kazi, rich, powerful and belonging to the landed gentry of the area, is a local Islamic leader.
To serve his political ambitions, Emdad collaborates with the marauding Pakistan Army and their local collaborators. Khaled, the only brother of the two sisters, a college student enlightened with secular ideas, joins a Bangali resistance guerilla group to fight against the Pakistan Army. Rabeya, the elder of the two sisters, is greatly influenced by the secular and progressive ideas of her brother and their idealistic father who was a schoolteacher.
Khaled’s guerrilla group operates on the other side of the Rupsha River fighting against the Pakistani soldiers and their collaborators, the “razakars.” But during a guerilla operation, Khaled is killed in a skirmish.
The Pakistani captain orders that the dead body of the young guerrilla fighter be denied burial. The corpse is left by the river bank in order to frighten the villagers and deter would-be rebels.
The dead body is kept under watch by Emdad Kazi’s retainers and nobody dares to bury Khaled’s dead body.
One night, Rabeya secretly proceeds to bury her brother and is shot and killed. The villagers then rise up and defeat the enemy. They remember Rabeya as a martyr for the cause of freedom.
