'Tomorrow' wins grand prize at Cannes World Film Festival

Bangladeshi animated short film, "Tomorrow," won the annual grand prize at the Cannes World Film Festival. The winners were announced on March 16 on the festival's website.

The animation follows a little boy, Ratul (Eashan Abdullah), as he discovers the horrors of climate change and devices a way to reverse the process with the help of his supernatural friend Batasher Buro (Old man of the wind, played by Deepak Kumar Goswami). Ratul’s school friends come on board in his plans to appeal to the authorities to tax fossil fuels and adapt to clean energy.

The film was directed by Mohammad Shihab Uddin and produced by Kazi Zahin Hasan and Kazi Zeeshan Hasan. Cycore studio animated the film with a team of youngsters. The screenwriters were Nasimul Hasan and Ahmed Khan Hirok.

The director told the Dhaka Tribune Showtime: “The technical challenge of working from scratch was paramount. We had to be creative about how the many locations in this film will look like in a dystopian future and in an alternative utopian one.”

“Tomorrow” is available on Deepto TV’s YouTube channel from December 2019. The film garnered over 3million views there.

Cannes World Film Festival is a monthly online film festival. “Tomorrow” had won the Best Animated Film award there in September 2021. Monthly submissions are automatically considered for the annual competition where 130 films received the grand prize this year.