Bangladeshi short-film 'Interiors & Exteriors' makes way to Oscars

Bangladeshi filmmaker Ashique Mostafa’s “Interiors & Exteriors” has won the KRÁTKÁ RADOST (Short Joy) award for the Best Short Documentary Film at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival held in Czech Republic. Jihlava IDFF is the largest festival of creative documentary in Central and Eastern Europe that especially focuses on unconventional documentary films. After the world premiere of the film, Ashique Mostafa expressed his experience of attending the festival: “It was an eye-opener for me to watch so many exceptional and extraordinary films at the festival that pushes the boundary of documentary filmmaking. Winging this Short Joy award brings a great deal of joy to me.” The Short Joy award includes online distribution and promotion worth €3,000. Also, the winner of the Oscar qualifying Short Joy award means that the documentary will be eligible for the pre-selection in the Documentary Short Subject category of the Academy Award. Shot with an iPhone, “Interiors & Exteriors” is an 8 minute long one-take observational piece about the microcosm of Islamic practices and class segregation in Bangladesh’s capital city, Dhaka. Multiplicity within a Muslim community and the passage of people through “one single frame” documents this society’s interiors and exteriors. Ashique Mostafa, co-founder of Khona Talkies, graduated from School of Visual Arts in New York with a joint degree in Direction and Production. As his graduation film, he made “Phulkumar” (2002) that was shot in Bangladesh. “Phulkumar” is remembered in Bangladesh even almost after a decade because it created the opportunity for a large group of young minds to actively participate in the process of filmmaking and learn filmmaking first hand. He has produced and distributed a few critically acclaimed films such as “720 Degrees” (Venice FF), “Meherjaan” (Fribourg FF), and now he is working on his zero-budget documentary feature film shot on an iPhone called “Invading Privacy,” which is in its post-production stage. “Interiors & Exteriors” is produced by Rubaiyat Hossain and presented by Khona Talkies.