Who really wrote what you loved in Bonolota Express?

Since Bonolota Express began streaming on Hoichoi, a fresh wave of admiration has swept across social media.

Directed by Tanim Noor and adapted from Kichukkhon by Humayun Ahmed, the film had already earned critical and audience acclaim during its Eid-ul-Fitr theatrical run.

Now, with the film reaching living rooms across Bangladesh and beyond, viewers are rediscovering its quietly brilliant touches — the cherubic child character, the tentative chemistry between the young university admission candidate couple, and the audacious storytelling device of a corpse narrating events with impeccable humour.

The reaction online has been almost unanimous: only a mind like Humayun Ahmed’s could have conceived such moments.

Except...not all of it came from him.

Many of the film’s most celebrated elements were introduced during adaptation. They do not exist in the original novel. 

The dead narrator, several expanded character arcs, much of the dialogue audiences are quoting online, and many of the film’s most emotionally resonant moments were shaped for the screen by screenplay and dialogue writers Ayman Asib Shadhin and Samiul Bhuiyan.

They more than just adapted a novel. They reimagined it. That required instinct for structure, sensitivity to character, and the courage to invent new cinematic devices while remaining faithful to the spirit of the source material.

This does not diminish Humayun Ahmed’s contribution. Kichukkhon provided the world, the emotional foundation and the soul of the story. His name deserves its prominence. 

But adaptation is not transcription. Between page and screen lies an enormous amount of creative labour — building scenes, reshaping pacing, expanding relationships, writing dialogue actors can inhabit naturally, and finding visual and emotional rhythms that literature alone cannot provide. That work belongs to screenwriters.

Yet public conversation rarely acknowledges this. For many viewers, the equation remains simple: beloved novelist plus beloved story equals every memorable moment on screen originating from that novelist alone. The screenwriters disappear into the shadow of a larger literary legend.

Ironically, the opposite happens when the source writer lacks fame. In such cases, audiences often credit the director almost entirely, as though the story emerged fully formed from directorial imagination. Again, the original storyteller fades away. Again, the screenwriter remains invisible.

Even films built entirely on original screenplays rarely change this dynamic. Screenplay and dialogue writers continue to operate in the shadows of the industry — absent from promotional campaigns, overlooked in reviews, and largely unknown to audiences whose emotions they shape scene by scene, line by line.

The problem is structural. Screenwriters are often underpaid relative to the value they create. At times, they are even denied proper visibility in promotional materials and credit hierarchies. Still, such omissions rarely trigger outrage because audiences are seldom taught to notice screenwriting as authorship in the first place.

The love for Bonolota Express is genuine, and deservedly so. But admiration should also be accurate.

Humayun Ahmed wrote Kichukkhon. Tanim Noor directed Bonolota Express. Ayman Asib Shadhin and Samiul Bhuiyan wrote the screenplay and dialogues — including many of the moments audiences are celebrating today.

It is time the industry, critics and viewers learned to say all three sentences together.