Saba

With her father missing, Saba (Mehazabien Chowdhury) is the sole caregiver to her paraplegic mother, Shirin (Rokeya Prachy), who suffers from acute heart disease. Although Shirin's condition binds them together, her frustration with their situation often manifests as bitterness and anger towards her daughter, so they live in their own separate worlds. When Shirin has a heart attack, Saba races against time to sell their home, lowering the price, and even risking her burgeoning romance with her senior co-worker Ankur (Mostafa Monwar) — who dreams of starting a new life abroad — to pay for her mom’s heart surgery.

With Saba, Maksud Hossain compassionately observes his characters struggling through tragic events and quotidian challenges in a country where “We are breathing to barely survive here,” as one of the characters says of their daily reality. At its core, Saba is about those faced with the choice to stay and build a life or leave all their hardships behind — whether that means emigrating to another country or, in an extreme sense, moving to another world.

The astonishing performances of Chowdhury, Prachy, and Monwar are boosted by the dynamic cinematography and vivid colour palette, which illustrates how Ankur, Saba, and Shirin deal with their potentially bleak outlooks. These characters find joy and reasons to live in small pleasures and rich experiences — savouring good food, enjoying fresh air, music and occasional furtive sips of alcohol, which is restricted both by law and by societal mores.

ROBYN CITIZEN

Content advisory: sexual innuendo