Films Boutique has boarded international sales on “The Difficult Bride,” Rubaiyat Hossain‘s supernatural feminist drama selected for the Horizons competition of the Venice Film Festival, where it will become the first Bangladeshi feature film to screen.
The cast includes three Bangladesh National Film Award winners – Azmeri Haque Badhon, Rikita Nondine Shimu and Sunerah Kamal – alongside Zaineen Chowdhury Karim in her lead acting debut and Dameer Khan in a guest appearance.
“The Difficult Bride” unfolds at Mayfair, a longtime Dhaka beauty parlor, and follows Zaineen Chowdhury Karim’s character as her wedding preparations draw her into an unsettling world shaped by beauty, faith, memory and fear. The screenplay draws on an urban legend Hossain heard as a child, about a bride who reportedly died at the salon under mysterious circumstances.
Principal photography was in Bangladesh, with post-production completed in Paris and Lisbon. The film is Hossain’s fourth feature and received post-production support from the inaugural Fondazione Prada Film Fund.
Hossain’s debut feature, “Meherjaan” (2011), picked up awards at the Northampton and Tiburon festivals. Her second feature, “Under Construction” (2015), screened at Locarno and Stockholm. Her third feature, “Made in Bangladesh” (2019), premiered in Toronto’s Contemporary World Cinema section, also screened at Locarno and BFI London, and brought her a first Asia Pacific Screen Award nomination.
