As key founding members of the Festival’s organising committee Murshida and Reasat opened up about their motivations to curate and produce a film festival around freedom, rights, and voice. Film studies researcher Amit Rai interviewed them for Diaspora Shorts.
AR: The powerful and challenging explorations of women’s bodies, desires, and strategies of autonomy are evocatively portrayed in Murshida’s films. Murshida, can you tell us a bit about your background as a filmmaker? How did you come to develop these themes?
Murshida: These themes emerged from lived experience. Growing up in Bangladesh, I witnessed how women’s voices are often shaped, controlled, or silenced by family structures, societal expectations, and deeply rooted religious norms. I have experienced several similar issues inside my family, especially how my mother and I were treated by my father. As a writer and filmmaker, I felt an urgency to document these invisible struggles—especially those connected to the body, desire, and autonomy. Film became a space where I could reclaim and reimagine those voices. But even before I began filmmaking, women’s creative freedom was central to my writing and activism. Over time, I realised that cinema has a powerful emotional language—it allows audiences not just to understand, but to feel. Women's freedom of expression, especially within restrictive cultural and religious frameworks, is not just a theme in my work; it is the foundation of why I create.”
The themes of freedom and voice, then, are the very basis of why the filmmaker makes her films, and we are excited to introduce new audiences to the passionate vision of freedom expressed in Murshida’s cinematic creations. In the context of this inaugural diasporic film festival, these themes are also deeply interconnected. Diaspora shapes identity and belonging; freedom of speech determines whether stories can be told; feminism challenges the structures that silence women; and voice is the thread that connects them all. For Murshida and Reasat and other members of the organising committee, their own diasporic journeys—as artists, creatives, and educators working across borders and as individuals shaped by social, cultural, and religious realities—synergistically brought these themes together as the foundation of the festival.
AR: What is important for audiences to know about your films?
Murshida: “I want audiences to understand that these stories are not abstract—they are deeply rooted in reality. The characters may seem quiet or restrained, but within them exists a complex inner world shaped by family, society, and religious expectations. Silence in my films is never emptiness; it is often a form of resistance, survival, or suppressed expression.”
The silences harken to the workings of dominant modes of power–patriarchal, class, religious, financial, societal, sexual–and they become palpable in Murshida’s storytelling, taking on the subdued force of an irrepressible and opaque character. For women filmmakers in Bangladesh, freedom of speech and women's empowerment is bound up in becoming a filmmaker, which presents both creative and personal challenges.
AR: Murshida, what were the kinds of social, professional, and physical risks involved in making your films? How were you able to make films that directly address taboo subjects such as women’s sexuality, desire, and self-fashioning?
Murshida: “In Bangladesh, speaking openly about women's bodies, sexuality, autonomy, and questioning restrictive religious interpretations can provoke strong reactions, particularly from conservative segments of society, including religious fundamentalists and Muslim extremists. This creates an environment where censorship—both external and internal—is a constant negotiation. But these challenges also reinforce the urgency of the work. They remind me why it is necessary to continue telling these stories, despite the risks.”
AR: Given your filmmaking practice of bringing silence to voice, how do you want people to interpret your films?
Murshida: “I hope that audiences engage emotionally and reflectively with my films, particularly how patriarchy operates not only through institutions but through intimate family dynamics, often reinforced by cultural and religious beliefs. Concepts like honor, shame, and obedience shape women’s lives in subtle but powerful ways. Recognising these contexts helps audiences see the depth behind seemingly simple moments … I want them to listen—to really listen—to women whose voices are often unheard or silenced by societal and religious pressures. I hope they leave with a sense of empathy, discomfort, and awareness that leads to reflection and, hopefully, change.”
Today, we know that the contexts of social and political upheaval are still very much active in the country, and so the stakes of women’s creative freedom are transparent. Women are killed for speaking out against their oppressors and are prevented from organising to end their own oppression. In these contexts of violence and misogyny, Murshida’s filmic experiments shine a courageous light of love, endurance, and questioning.
Reasat, Murshida’s partner and creative collaborator, is also one of the key founding members of Diaspora Shorts. Himself a producer and filmmaker, he has also acted in Murshida’s films.
AR: What was it like to act in your partner’s film?
Reasat: “For me, acting in Murshida’s film was an intense and introspective experience. The performances required emotional restraint rather than overt expression. It was about conveying what is left unsaid—through body language, silence, and presence.”
AR: Your finely subdued performance in the film also brought out the politics involved in the body’s habits and its nervous tricks, the silences constituting ‘voice,’ and the presence around a dinner table. How did you become an actor and filmmaker?
Reasat: I actually had a long apprenticeship to cinema, as my connection to acting actually began much earlier in my life, as I performed on stage during my childhood and youth. That early experience helped shape my understanding of performance and expression, which I carried into film. For me, acting in these films deepened my interest in performance, especially in projects that explore complex social realities, including themes shaped by cultural and religious contexts. As an actor, I focus on interpreting the director’s vision and bringing authenticity to the character. And working with Murshida to develop a shared artistic environment allowed for meaningful exchanges about performance, tone, and the emotional layers of the story.
AR: Clearly, then, there were also many challenges in producing these films, as you mentioned, film production in Bangladesh has its own singular infrastructure and postcolonial logistics. Can you talk a little more about these challenges?
Reasat: “Working with limited resources required creativity and resilience. At the same time, being part of a project with such a strong purpose—addressing sensitive social and religious issues—made the struggle worthwhile. The main obstacles for a film producer in Bangladesh, as elsewhere, are funding. Funding is a major challenge, especially for independent and socially critical films. When making ‘Beyond the Shore’, for instance, we had totally gone through our savings and were nearly destitute for a period of time, and that was a big challenge for us. There are also issues related to censorship, distribution, and lack of infrastructure. Additionally, telling stories that question societal norms, including religious sensitivities, often means facing resistance from both institutions and audiences.”
Diaspora Shorts is innovatively engaging communities and collectively activating resources in the refugee Camp. The aim thus is to activate communal spaces—places where people gather, socially and organically. Through screenings, workshops, and discussions, these spaces can become living platforms for storytelling, where themes of displacement, diaspora identity, women’s voices, and freedom of expression can be accessibly explored through collective dialogue and encounters, and through a decolonial and feminist ethics of care. So we hope that all the camp residents and staff will engage with the festival as active participants—not just as viewers, but as co-storytellers and creative collaborators. The festival should feel like a shared space where the precarious voices of those who too often remain unheard in Denmark’s civil society and public sphere can express creatively and freely claim their future. Through workshops, screenings, and discussions, we hope participants will explore their own experiences of diaspora, identity, gender, and expression.
The organising committee also invites all participants and audience members to help build the legacies of the festival. As the organisers of the festival, we hope you carry forward into your everyday lives the themes of freedom of speech, women’s rights, and the right to physical and emotional well-being and care. The Festival’s legacy will be the strengthening of marginalised voices—particularly those from diasporic and feminist communities—and the affirmation of resistant storytelling. We want the festival, say Murshida and Reasat, to inspire confidence in self-expression, foster dialogue around feminism and human rights, and create lasting connections. Ultimately, and with your continued political and ethical commitment and solidarity, the legacy of Diaspora Shorts will be about not only ensuring that marginal voices are heard during the festival but that their stories of marginalisation and erasure continue to be heard long after it ends.
