Balur Nogorite
SAND CITY
2025, 99 minutes, Bangladesh, 4K, 1.5:1, Color, 5.1 Sound, in Bengali with English subtitles
Sales/Festivals: Diversion
Proxima Grand Prix winner
2025 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
“A realm unknown, where architecture breathes and silence screams. Time drips sideways in this fractured hourglass, and color spills like memory. In Sand City, cinema becomes a trembling map of the strange, abandoned, and intimate at the edge of sense.”
Synopsis:
Two parallel stories about two individuals. An ethnic
minority woman and a man from the majority population.
They are not directly related. The only thing they have in
common is SAND.
Emma, the film's female protagonist, collects sand for her
cat litter. She sets out on her scooter every week and picks
up her litter’s fill of sand. One day, she discovers a finger in
the sand—a severed finger with a crimson polished nail.
Rather than panicking, she gradually develops an unusual
attachment with the lone finger.
Hasan, on the other hand, works in a glass manufacturing
plant. He steals silica sand and other valuable materials from
the plant to make glass at home and dreams of building his
own massive glass factory. What begins as a solitary activity,
soon leads to a fantasy that gradually destroys him.
Director's Statement
My narrative focuses on the element of sand as a microcosm to reflect
city life. Sand is an unstable element, and, to me, it seems like an
appropriate metaphor for our wobbly urban existence. My characters
end up having their lives intervened with sand, both consciously and
unconsciously. For me, it is a duty to collect these stories under one
magnifying glass. Sand helps me to unify these two characters in one
bowl, put them together on a plane.
Sand holds another significance for me. Business agencies collect sand
from the river that flows beside the city. While on the other hand, they
fill up rivers with the same sand to construct buildings. This is how the
small, insignificant, and unstable sand builds up the new extended city.
This film is the story of my characters and how they live out their stories
in a desperation to survive in this “sand city.”
About the Director:
Mahde Hasan is an introspective and visually keen filmmaker from Bangladesh. His short films I AM TIME and DEATH OF A READER Am Time were presented at the 69th and 71st Locarno Festival. With WHERE IS THE FRIEND'S HOME, he came first in the ‘movieofmylife’ digital competition at the 70th Locarno Festival. In 2018, he participated in the Locarno Film Festival’s Open Doors Hub and received the CNC development grant for his debut feature SAND CITY. It was selected to NANTES PRODUIRE AU SUD 2018 and also chosen to participate in La Fabrique Cinéma de l’Institut français 2019 at Cannes. In 2021, it got the production grant from the Swiss fund Visions sud est. His another short film, A BORING FILM, was selected in the Pardi di Domani section at Locarno Film Festival 2020. His background also includes participation in two film residency programs: a two-month residency in Switzerland in 2018 and a five-week residency in Los Angeles in 2023, initiated by Film Independent.
