Investigative documentary film Merciless Mayhem: The Bangladesh Genocide through Pakistani Eye is scheduled for a screening at the National Art Gallery auditorium of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, at 5pm on Friday.
Liberation War Affairs Minister AKM Mozammel Haque is set to inaugurate the event, which will also see LGRD Minister Md Tajul Islam in attendance as the chief guest.
State Minister for Cultural Affairs KM Khalid is also scheduled to attend the event as a special guest, and National Professor Anisuzzaman is set to be the guest of honour.
Shilpakala Academy Director General Liaquat Ali Lucky will preside over the event.
Directed by prominent film-maker, media and television personality Fuad Chowdhury, Merciless Mayhem depicts the history of Bangladesh between the 1947 Partition and the Liberation War of 1971 from a Pakistani perspective.
The documentary shows how the Bangladeshis suffered discrimination at the hands of the Pakistani government, the oppression inflicted upon them, the Pakistani government's tyranny, the lies spread about Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the torture and rape of innumerable Bangladeshi women in 1971, genocide, and robbery of Bangladesh's resources.
The 54-minutes long film, produced by Aman Ullah Chowdhury, was made in 2018.
Among the witnesses of the atrocities featured in this documentary, there are four Pakistani individuals: Rowshan Zamir served as Jessore's district's deputy commissioner for Pakistan in 1971 and later retired as the Pakistan government's federal secretary, journalist Tareque Khan worked in Chittagong till 1971 and returned to Pakistan on the last cargo ship, while Moazzem Khan was a Pakistani student living in Bangladesh in 1971. His father was a high official in the Pakistan Military, as a result of which they were neighbours to General Niazi in Dhaka Cantonment. The final Pakistani individual in the film is Tareque Fatah, who is a writer and a columnist.
The film reveals the opinions, anger, analysis, and regrets expressed by the Pakistanis, along with photos depicting the mass-cleansing of the oppressed and tortured Bangladeshis.
The screening is an initiative by Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy's Dramatics and Film department.
