Mostafa Sarwar Farooki revealed the first look for his English language feature, "No Land's Man," on Monday, September 6. The first look features Nawazuddin Siddiqui looking at the camera, donning a “Great America Make Again” hat.
The film has recently been nominated for the Kim Jiseok Award at the 2021 Busan Film Festival. Brilliante Mendoza from the Philippines, Naoko Ogigami from Japan, Aparna Sen from India will compete with their films in the category as well.
In 2014, “No Land’s Man” won the Motion Picture Association of America and Asia Pacific Screen Awards’ Script Development fund and was part of the Asian Project Market at Busan. It was selected as the best project at India’s Film Bazaar the same year.
Starring Indian thespian Nawazuddin Siddiqui, the film chronicles a tragic, but strangely funny journey of a South Asian man whose life gets complicated when he meets an Australian girl in the US.
Director Farooki told Dhaka Tribune, "The film deals with global identity politics. And it’s an English language film, because most part of the film is set in New York and Australia. A small part is set in Mumbai and Lucknow. The characters are people from different countries. When an Australian, an Indian and a Bangladeshi converse, the language is naturally English."
Revealing the first look for his new film, Farooki wrote in a Facebook post, “What you see now in the form of a still image today is an outcome of ten long years of tenacious working. First started working on the script of No Land's Man ten years ago. I stumbled, suffered, but picked myself up again in these ten years! My journey started with a rejection from a fund. I was sad. I came back to the writing table, rewrote, resubmitted and got the funding next time.”
“I changed the editing almost every month. I even changed the entire structure of the film last month. I didn't give up. Because, I believe in the film. I believe the pain of the central characters of No Land's Man needs to be told. I believe the world needs to be mocked. I believe I breathe through this film!”
He added, “My gratitude to AR Rahman, Anjan Chowdhury, Faridur Reza Sagar, Bongo, Nusrat Imrose Tisha, Shrihari Sathe and most importantly Nawazuddin Siddiqui (hope he receives my thanks from his Europe bound flight)! My heartfelt thanks to my brilliant team of casts and crews! I love you all! Hope general audience gets to see the film soon.”
Here is the first look:
