Jonaki Bhattacharya

The political ambition of a Bangladeshi teacher corrodes both community and self, as corruption takes hold.

Shimu, 23, works in a clothing factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Faced with difficult conditions at work, she decides to start a union with her co-workers. Despite threats from the management and disapproval of her husband, Shimu is determined to go on. Together the women must fight and find a way to register their union.

Just when the people of an expanding Calcutta feel their dreams might be fulfilled, they hear the sound of things falling.

While Jonaki, an 80-year-old woman, searches for love in a strange world of decaying memories, her lover, now old and grey, returns to a world she is leaving behind.

Set in the crumbling environs of Calcutta, Labour of Love is a lyrical unfolding of two ordinary lives suspended in the duress of a spiralling recession.

Novera, a bride-to-be in present-day Dhaka, is in love with her groom and dreams of a fairytale wedding, but secretly struggles with her body’s resistance to wedding rituals. As stress and emotional pain intensify, a mysterious woman with long hair begins appearing in Novera’s imagination.

Next feature from Aditya Vikram Sengupta which explores the present-day Hindu-Muslim tension in India.