“Reels of Resistance” highlights indigenous stories at DUFS

At a time when tensions are once again rising in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), marked by sporadic violence, and fear among indigenous communities, the screening of indigenous films "My Bicycle" (2015) and "Dear Mother" (2023) is a gesture of solidarity and a counter-archive against erasure.

"My Bicycle" (Mor Thengari / "My Bicycle") directed by Aung Rakhine is the first full-length film in the Chakma language in Bangladesh. It tells a deceptively simple tale. Komol, an indigenous Chakma man, loses his job in a town and returns home with only a bicycle. He attempts to build a livelihood in his village by carrying passengers and goods, but his simple means of making a living collides with local power structures and results in extortion, sabotage, and ultimately violence. 

Photo: Ratul Chowdhury

From the outset, My Bicycle was intended less for commercial success than to put Chakma lives, language, and struggles on screen. Aung Rakhine has said it was made "not out of commercial interests but out of a need to present Bangladeshi indigenous communities on screen."

Yet for years it was blocked by the Bangladesh Film Censor Board. Some say the board lacked capacity to certify films in non-Bengali languages; others suspected the film was objectionable because of its portrayal of state actors, or because it implicitly critiques army or paramilitary presence in the hills. 

The censor board reportedly demanded that large swathes of the film; first 20 seconds, then 25 minutes, be cut.The Bangladesh Army is said to have lodged complaints about how the security forces were depicted. 

Despite the suppression domestically, My Bicycle toured film festivals abroad (Estonia, Göteborg, Zanzibar, Russia) and earned recognition for its screenplay and authenticity. 

Dear Mother (Kio Ri Pekra Uo / "Dear Mother") is a relatively newer film directed by SK Shuvo Shadique. Released in 2023, it is the first feature film in the underrepresented Mro language in Bangladesh. The film is almost entirely self-funded without mainstream commercial or institutional backing. 

Photo: Ratul Chowdhury

Damra, a young Mro girl, grows up being told that her mother lives atop a distant hill. When she learns to write, she composes a letter but struggles to send it. After her father's unexpected death, she faces the wilderness of silence, absence, suspicion, and social forces. 

The narrative is minimal and symbolic. It consists of long still shots,  with "static" or minimal camera movement emphasizing the weight of place and memory, a cinematic choice apparent in both the films. In that sense, this is not your usual "message film". The film is mostly silent, but through that silence, a cinematic allegory is created of absence, abandonment, question, and grief. 

Shadique's strategy deliberately rejects commercial constraints: the film is screened free in open-air venues, without ticket sales, and often in guerrilla mode to evade censorship mechanics. He has coined the term "Liberate Cinephile" for this ethic, stating that cinema cannot be the monopoly of investors, gatekeepers, or censors, it must open itself to people. 

Because of the militarized zone in which the film was made, the crew often operated clandestinely, using small numbers, shifting locales, and avoiding red tape.

The film was first screened in December 2023 at Drik, Panthapath. Earlier in March of this year,, the film was screened at the University of Cambridge, under the management of Indigenous Studies Group. The International Centre for Social Science (Amsterdam) has reportedly preserved the film as a cultural document. 

Critics have remarked that Shadique's method: free screenings, Indigenous cast and collaborators, guerrilla approach is an outright critique of the commercialization of Bengali cinema and the systemic exclusion of hill genres. A member of the Dhaka University Film society, arranging committee of this screening stated the same, on how if a language is not practised, or made art out of, it becomes endangered, wiping out years of history and rich culture and that this is them doing their part in its preservation to ensure that they are spoken of.

Photo: Ratul Chowdhury

These films invert that erasure by insisting: yes, these lives are here, they speak, they grieve, they resist.

Since 2022, the Chittagong Hill Tracts conflict has reemerged in its second phase, threatening the tenuous peace of the 1997 Accord. In April 2023, eight Bawm men were killed in an "alleged gunfight" in Rowangchari, a case that many Indigenous leaders and civil society organizations called an extrajudicial massacre. 

More recently, in late September 2025, the Bangladesh Army opened fire on local tribal citizens of the Guimara area of Khagrachari , resulting in deaths and many injuries. Settler mobs allegedly burned down many Indigenous houses following this. This shockwave followed protests by students over an earlier gang rape case in Khagrachari of a Marma girl, which mobilized protests at Dhaka University, in Shahbagh, and in the hills. 

At the same time, in 2025, the Bawm community has increasingly been targeted in alleged "anti-terror" operations. Between October 2022 and October 2024, more than 4,000 Bawm persons have reportedly been displaced from ancestral land, while at least 22 civilians have died in state custody, and many more have been detained without trial. In August 2025, a protest and cultural gathering was held in Dhaka demanding the release of Bawm people and an end to violence.

In Khagrachari itself, in 2024, over 100 Indigenous houses and shops were torched by settlers in Dighinala and Boalkhali, allegedly with assistance from army personnel, displacing many and deepening the sense of impunity. 

When injustice is systemic, when people vanish from history by omission, then art must step in. In Bangladesh's hills, where battles over land, identity, and sovereignty rage again, My Bicycle and Dear Mother are urgent calls for resistance and awareness. 

What the Dhaka University Film Society is doing is precisely the work of cultural resistance. Any regime can suppress a protest march; suppressing a memory is harder when people are willing to watch, speak, question.